New Faculty Guide to Competing for

Research Funding

What all new faculty need to know

about finding funding and writing
research proposals

By Mike Cronan and Lucy Deckard

August 2012 edition

 New Faculty Guide to
Competing for Research Funding

What all new faculty need to know about finding funding

and writing research proposals

BY MIKE CRONAN AND LUCY DECKARD

Strategies to help new faculty get off to a successful

start in identifying and competing for grants to support
their research

August 2012 edition

Note: This electronic book has been purchased on the basis of an institutional
license agreement, which authorizes unlimited distribution of this book within
your institution. Within the institution, it may be copied, duplicated, distributed
electronically, in whole or in part, and it may be posted to a secure campus
website not accessible by those outside the institution or by Google search.
Please do not post this book on an open website.

Copyright 2012 Academic Research Funding Strategies, LLC. All rights reserved
TABLE OF CONTENTS
About the Authors………………………………………………………….. 1
Introduction…………………………………………………………………. 2
The Big Picture
Developing a Research Funding Strategic Plan……………………….. 3
Developing Your Research Agenda…………………………………….. 5
Developing Your Education Agenda…………………………………….. 7
Finding Funding
Finding Research Funding: an Overview……………………………….. 9
Who Funds What? A Quick Guide………………………………………… 12
Funding from Federal Agencies………………………………………….. 16
Funding from Foundations………………………………………………… 17
Funding in the Humanities………………………………………………… 18
Funding Less Well-Supported Research Areas…………………………. 19
Faculty at PUIs: When You Need Equipment……………………………. 23
Planning Your Proposal
Role of the RFP, Request for Proposals………………………………….. 27
Role of the RFP in Proposal Organization……………………………….. 28
Understanding Funding Agency Mission & Culture……………………... 29
Program Officers and When to Contact Them…………………………… 31
Writing for Reviewers………………………………………………………. 34
Agency Review Criteria……………………………………………………. 36
Finding Research Funding Mentors………………………………………. 38
Working with Research Collaborators…………………………………….. 40
Scheduling Proposal Production…………………………………………… 43
Writing the Proposal
Typical Proposal Structure…………………………………………………. 46
Writing a Compelling Project Summary…………………………………… 47
Avoid the Generic Introduction……………………………………………… 48
Writing a Competitive Proposal Narrative……………………………….... 50
The Role of Specificity in the Successful Proposal……………………… 53
Vision, Goals, Objectives, Rationale, and Outcomes……………………. 56
Don’t Build Your Proposal Out of Spare Parts……………………………. 60
Research Affinity Groups…………………………………………………… 63
The Challenge of Integrating Multiple Authors……………………………. 68
Graphics as a Narrative Integrator…………………………………………. 72
Writing Unsolicited Proposals and White Papers………………………… 74
The Path Forward
Responding to Reviews and Strategies For Resubmission………………77
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………. 81
This book was published by Academic Research Funding Strategies, LLC, a consulting
firm that specializes in helping faculty and universities compete more successfully for
research funding. We also publish a monthly newsletter, Research Development & Grant
Writing News, which addresses in greater depth the subjects touched on in this book.
The newsletter also includes information on recently-announced funding opportunities,
strategic changes at the agencies, and other time-limited information. For more
information about the newsletter and how to subscribe, please see our website.

The Authors
Mike Cronan, consultant and principal co-editor of Research Development and Grant Writing News,
joined Academic Research Funding Strategies in 2010. His insights are based on 23 years of experience
developing and writing successful proposals at Texas A&M University. He was named a Texas A&M
University System Regents Fellow (2001-2010) for developing and writing A&M System-wide grants
funded at over $100 million by NSF and other research agencies, 1990-2000.
He developed, staffed, and directed two highly successful proposal development offices at Texas
A&M, one in the Texas Engineering Experiment Station (Office of Research Development & Grant Writing,
1994-2004), a state-wide engineering research agency with divisions at 14 universities, and the second
for the Vice President for Research (Office of Proposal Development, 2004-09), working across all
academic disciplines in 11 colleges.
Mike Cronan has undergraduate degrees in civil engineering (University of Michigan), political science
(Michigan State University), and a MFA in English (University of California-Irvine). He is a registered
professional engineer in Texas.

Lucy Deckard, established Academic Research Funding Strategies, LLC in 2010 and is co-editor of Research
Development & Grant Writing News. She works with universities and faculty across the country to help
them develop and write more competitive proposals, ranging from large, center-level proposals to single
PI CAREER and Young Investigator proposals. Previously, Ms. Deckard worked in research development at
Texas A&M University for 8 years, most recently serving as Associate Director of the university's Office of
Proposal Development. She has helped to develop and write successful proposals to NSF, NIH, the
Department of Education, the Department of Defense, and other agencies and foundations. In addition,
she directed the university's New Faculty Initiative, working with new faculty to jumpstart their research
by helping them to identify funding opportunities, develop a strategy for pursuing funding, understand
funding agencies, and learn how to write competitive proposals.
Ms. Deckard also worked with faculty in Predominantly Undergraduate Institutions and Minority
Serving Institutions across the Texas A&M University System. Before joining Texas A&M, she worked for
16 years as a research engineer in industry, including at Lockheed Martin and Hughes Research Labs,
obtaining funding from DoD, DARPA and the Department of Energy. She has a B.S. in Materials Science
from Rice University and an M.S. in Materials Science and Engineering from Northwestern University.

The Editor
Katherine E. Kelly, PhD is a retired English professor from Texas A&M University. She is the author of
several books and numerous articles and served as a contributing editor for an academic journal for five
years. She provides editorial services to Research Development & Grant Writing News and to ARFS clients
seeking editorial help with proposals, journal articles, and manuscripts.

1
The following sections cover the core questions most often raised by new faculty
starting a university research career. While federal agencies, foundations, and other
funders of research differ significantly in their research mission and objectives, in
agency culture and protocols, and in guidelines for submitting unsolicited proposals, the
core knowledge base and writing expertise you need to acquire comprise an
accumulation of generic strategies leading to more success in grant writing, regardless
of academic discipline or research agency.
For example, regardless of whether you are submitting a proposal to the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) or the National Endowment for the
Humanities (NEH), your core competitive strategies will be similar:
 You must make a compelling case for the significance of your research, including
its impact on the field and the value it brings to the agency’s mission.
 You must understand the mission and culture of the agency sufficiently to
explain how your research fits within the context (e.g., goals, objectives,
outcomes, etc.) of the agency’s research priorities as defined in the funding
opportunity.
 You must write a research narrative that fully responds to the program
guidelines.
 You must understand how your proposal will be reviewed.
 You must describe for reviewers:
o what you will do,
o why it is important to do it,
o the significance and impact of your research on the field and agency
mission,
o why you are the right person to do the research,
o why you have the capacity, expertise, and experience to perform it, and
o that you have the institutional infrastructure to support your efforts
when required.

These, and other topics addressed here, offer generic strategies for success,
although they will be made more robust and nuanced by the specifics you come to
understand about specific agencies, your discipline, and more detailed requirements
unique to particular agencies or their programs.

2
The first few months as a new faculty member can be overwhelming, but setting aside
some time to start developing a strategic plan for funding your research will help you in
the long run. New faculty members face a tremendous number of demands on their
time. In addition to learning your way around campus, setting up your office, getting to
know your colleagues, and preparing to teach, set aside some time to develop a
strategic plan for what you will do over the next few years to position yourself to secure
funding for your research. Creating a plan to guide you will make finding and competing
for funding less overwhelming and will help you use your time more efficiently. In fact,
many of the things you’ll need to do can be accomplished in parallel with your other
activities. For example, when you meet with your Department Chair, ask about
departmental expectations regarding funding, and as you meet your departmental
colleagues, keep an eye out for potential grant mentors and collaborators.
Below is a list of steps you need to take as part of developing your strategic plan.
Subsequent chapters will explore many of these topics in more detail.
 Develop your research agenda: What research topics do you plan to pursue over
the next five years? (You probably had to do this as part of your search for a
faculty position, but you should revisit your plan periodically as your field evolves
and as you determine the strengths of your institution and identify potential
collaborators.)
 Develop your education agenda: What are your interests related to education in
your discipline? (This is particularly important if you plan to pursue funding from
NSF. )
 Determine the expectations for research funding in your department: How is
funding counted in the promotion and tenure process in your department? Are
you expected to win external funding early in your career, or are publications
more important? When should you start pursuing external funding?
 Find research grant mentors: These may be well-funded faculty in your
department, colleagues from other departments, former dissertation advisors,
staff in your research development office, or colleagues from other institutions.
 Find out who is likely to fund your research, and get to know those funders:
Just as you need to network within your research community, you also need to
get to know and understand your funding community – understand the mission,
culture, and procedures of agencies and foundations likely to fund your research,
and get to know the program officers, reviewers, and researchers who are well-
funded in your research area.
 Develop a process for identifying specific funding opportunities that you may
want to pursue now or in the future: Many grant programs are recurring and
have relatively predictable due dates. Others, particularly those in highly active
areas, may appear suddenly. Creating a process for identifying opportunities
3
 early will give you time to plan the opportunities to pursue and avoid last-minute
proposals.
 Identify potential collaborators if appropriate: If you’re in a field that
encourages collaboration, then collaborating with other researchers can help
you move into new fields of research and compete more successfully for grant
funding. It’s important, however, to determine how your department and
institution view collaboration and how joint projects and publications will be
handled during the promotion and tenure review.
 Identify research development resources at your institution: Most universities
have research offices, and many have research development offices that provide
a range of services that may include websites with updated funding opportunity
lists, proposal workshops for new faculty, personal consultations, and even
assistance with editing your proposal. Sponsored Projects (or similarly named)
offices will often help you with your budget and with routing, uploading, and
submitting your proposal. Seek out the resources available at your institution
and the procedures required to use them.
 Do your homework and determine what you must to do to be competitive:
Writing a proposal takes a lot of time and effort, so you’ll want to make sure
your proposal is as competitive as possible. Do you need more preliminary data?
Have you read all of the relevant literature? Do you understand the program to
which you’re applying? Have you talked to the Program Officer? Have you talked
to other researchers who have been funded through that program? Develop
your proposal-writing skills. If your institution offers proposal-writing workshops,
take advantage of them. Ask your funding mentors to show you examples of
successful and unsuccessful proposals.
 Schedule your proposal writing: What grant do you plan to submit first and
when is it due? What grant will you submit after that? How long will it take to
produce the proposal? When should you start working on that first grant? Put
those dates on your calendar, and set aside time for proposal writing. If you wait
for your calendar to be clear, it will never happen!
 Plan to be declined: It’s a fact of life for anyone who submits proposals that they
will be declined more often than they’ll be funded. Successful researchers learn
from their reviews and continue to submit proposals. Build into your plan the
expectation that you will need to revise and resubmit your proposal before it is
funded.

We’ll discuss these steps in the rest of this book. We’ll also give an overview of the
actual writing process and the sections that appear in a typical research proposal. Our
intention is to give you a high-level overview of the process for finding and competing
for research funding without overwhelming you. Other resources, including our monthly
newsletter, Research Development and Grant Writing News, and agency- and discipline-
specific books on funding, explore these subjects in considerably more detail, discussing
particular programs and agencies.
4
As you search for research funding, it’s important to have a clear idea of where you
want to go with your research. Having a clear, focused idea of your research direction
will enable you to select the grants that will help you develop a clear line of scholarship.
Publications will, in turn, help you establish the credentials that proposal reviewers
seek. The detailed steps to follow in developing a research agenda vary considerably by
discipline, but take these considerations into account as you consider funding options:
 Is your research agenda sufficiently separated from that of your graduate advisor
so that you will be able to establish an independent career?
 Is your research agenda in an area that you are passionate about and would
enthusiastically spend the next few years working on?
 Do you have a strong publication record that will support your chosen research
area or a closely related area, or do you have a plan to establish a strong record
soon? If the area is very new, will your previous publications demonstrate your
qualifications to pursue this research area?
 Is your research agenda in an exciting, vigorous, high-impact area of scholarship
(rather than in an already well-researched area in which progress is now
incremental)?
 Is your research agenda in an area currently funded or likely to be funded by
agencies or foundations?
 Have you reviewed the strategic investment plans, research roadmaps, reports,
and workshop results of the agencies you are targeting for funding?
This is not an argument for planning your future research based solely on any of these
considerations whose importance will vary by discipline. For example, you may be
passionate about an area of poorly funded scholarship, but if you have a strategy for
conducting that research without external funding, and if your department values
publications over funding, that could be a good choice for you. However, it is wise for
any early career researcher to know the answers to the above questions before deciding
on a particular research agenda.

Moving to a New Research Area

At this point in your career, you may have two or three research interests that move in
somewhat different directions: continuation of the research that you did for your
dissertation or postdoc, a relatively newer and more innovative offshoot of that
research, and perhaps some research on a different but related topic that you plan to
conduct in collaboration with other faculty. You’ll typically have the strongest track
record in terms of data and publications in the research related to your dissertation
topic. On the other hand, the newer research directions may be more exciting and

5
innovative. Many researchers maintain more than one track of research and pursue
funding in each.
In the case of the newer research area, you’ll want to start developing a track record
in that area by generating preliminary data and publishing your findings. If you feel well
qualified to conduct research on a topic, but an aspect of the research lies somewhat
outside your expertise (an increasingly common occurrence as disciplinary lines become
blurred in new areas of research), recruit a collaborator who can contribute that
expertise. If you are faculty at a Predominantly Undergraduate Institution, and you
identify an NSF-funded potential collaborator, you can participate in a Faculty
Opportunity Award Supplement, whereby NSF provides funding enabling you to work
with that faculty member during the summer. If the field is very new and you cannot
find a collaborator, look for connections between the new research area and your prior
research, and build on those connections. Reviewers look closely at your publications,
so you’ll need to make a convincing case that some of your prior publications, even if
they are in a somewhat different field, are germane to the current research topic. And,
of course, you’ll want to publish in the area as soon as possible.

Establishing Long-Range Research Goals

Your research proposal will be more compelling if you can place the proposed research
project in the context of your larger research agenda. What do you want to accomplish
in this field over the next ten years? How will this particular project (which may be two-,
three-, or five-years long) help you advance toward those long-term goals? Funders look
for significance and impact, so tying a proposed two-year project (in which only a
limited number of experiments can be accomplished) to your larger goals will allow you
to make a stronger argument for the impact of your research.
Creating a long-range research plan will also help you make strategic decisions about
pursuing some funding opportunities over others. While it’s important to be flexible and
move with the changes in your field, you’ll want to avoid the trap of letting funding
dictate your research. Jumping from topic to topic based on funding opportunities that
happen to be available can result in a disjointed research record, and such proposals
tend not to be successful anyway. Creating a well-thought-out, long-term research
agenda will position you to use research funding as a tool to help accomplish your goals
rather than as a wild card determining those goals.

6
Developing Your Education Agenda

NSF and, increasingly, other funding agencies, require education, outreach, and diversity
components in research proposals. Establishing a long-term education agenda that fits
your interests can make those components stronger and the projects, once funded,
more rewarding.
New faculty are not surprised that they need to develop a long-term research
agenda; however, it can be a surprise that they should also develop an education
agenda. (This is much more than the teaching philosophy you may have developed as
part of your application for a faculty position, although they may have some elements in
common.) NSF and, increasingly, other federal funding agencies want to know how your
project will improve the education of students at various levels (not just graduate
students), increase the diversity of graduates (particularly those in science, technology,
engineering, and math) and benefit society as a whole. In the rest of this chapter, we’ll
focus on NSF, since they generally have the most stringent criteria in this area.
Selecting Issues to Address
When developing your education agenda, first consider those issues related to
education and outreach in your field that interest you. Is there an educational issue or
need that you feel strongly about? Perhaps you are a scientist and have a child in
elementary school and would like to help improve the quality of science instruction in
elementary school. Perhaps you want to encourage more women to pursue careers in
physics. It could be that you want to help improve understanding of your subject in the
community. Maybe you’ve been teaching a sophomore class in your field and have
noticed that the students aren’t grasping an important concept. Any of these issues
could inspire a variety of educational activities appropriate for an NSF grant.
Next, consider the needs and mission of your institution. Does your university serve
a large number of minority students, students who are the first in their families to
attend college, students from rural areas, working students, or another special
demographic? What are your institution’s future priorities and plans? Perhaps they
have identified e-learning as a big priority, or they are pushing to become a Tier One
institution and increase their research activity, or perhaps they’ve identified increasing
diversity of the student body as a major concern. Think about what educational needs
you could address in support of these priorities.

Researching the Issue

Next, read the educational literature to find out what others have done in this area.
Two very helpful resources include the NSF MSPnet (Math and Science Partnership
Network) and ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), which is a searchable
database of education research articles. If, for example, your goal is to encourage more
girls to pursue careers in physics, you might look for articles discussing the factors that
7
affect girls’ interest in science. You might also look to see what others have done in this
area and how successful those efforts have been. Your discipline may also have an
education journal; for example, the American Society for Engineering Education has a
peer-reviewed journal, conferences, and resources on their website. If you find some
interesting approaches, it’s fine to propose to implement those approaches at your
campus. NSF doesn’t expect their PIs to reinvent the wheel; implementing approaches
that have been successful elsewhere and assessing the results will contribute to the
body of knowledge in education.
Look for available campus resources on which you can draw. If your education topic
relates to an institution-wide priority (for example, increasing diversity of engineering
students, improving e-learning, providing more opportunities for students to become
globally engaged, or improving students’ communication skills), you should be able to
locate ongoing activities to which you can connect. There may also be experts with
whom you can collaborate. Even if your chosen topic is not a campus-wide priority (for
example, you might be concerned with a discipline-specific issue such as deficiencies in
how a particular scientific concept in your field is taught), there may be experts in
education, psychology, or other departments, or in a university office such as a Center
for Teaching Excellence or a Writing Center who might be able to advise you. Talk to
colleagues, but be aware that, particularly if you’re at a large institution, they may not
be aware of resources outside of your college. A university’s research office and its
website can also lead you to education and outreach resources across your campus.
Building a Track Record
Just as reviewers will look for your track record in research to assess your expertise,
they will look at your education and outreach track record. It’s one thing to say that you
plan to implement an innovative teaching approach; it’s another to say that you have
already implemented that approach on a pilot basis and discuss the results. Of course,
as a new faculty member, you have limited time and resources, but there are often
small tasks you can take on that support your education agenda and will help you to
develop a track record. If one of your priorities is to recruit more minority students into
science, volunteering to judge a science fair in a local school district with high minority
enrollment would not require a large time commitment but would help you build
relationships with the schools and provide experience that you can mention in your
proposals. If you have an idea for a new teaching approach, try it out in one of your
classes and note the results.
You can also build a track record by participating in education projects that might be
funded (or are being proposed) in your department, such as NSF Research Experiences
for Undergraduates (REU), Research Experiences for Teachers (RET), and Transforming
Undergraduate Education in STEM (TUES). At this point in your career, you shouldn’t
take on a project role that entails administrative responsibilities (such as PI of an REU),
but you should consider acting as a research mentor for an REU, which will not require a
lot of time in meetings and will provide valuable experience that you can mention in
your next proposal.
8
This topic area will be addressed by focusing on the following four subtopics related to
finding funding for your research:
 Funding from Federal Agencies,
 Funding from Foundations,
 Funding in the Humanities, and
 Funding for Less Well-Supported Research Areas.

These subtopic areas share characteristics as the following definitions and discussion of
common terms should clarify:
 There are two major research funding paths open to new faculty: one
involves responding to an agency-published research solicitation, and the
other involves following agency-specific guidelines for the submission of
unsolicited or investigator-initiated research proposals. New faculty should
explore and understand both of these funding mechanisms.
 Funding announcements, or solicitations, may be referred to differently by
various agencies, including Request for Proposals (RFP), Funding Opportunity
Announcement (FOA), Program Announcement (PA), or Broad Agency
Announcement (BAA), among others. We will refer to those here as the RFP.
RFPs contain the key information you will need to submit a proposal, and
their role will be addressed in a subsequent section.
 Most university research is funded by federal agencies, but an important
research role is also played by foundations, industry, state agencies, and
private sources, among others.
 In the humanities and humanities-related social sciences, research funding
for scholarly work often comes from libraries, collections, associations,
museums, and related institutions, all addressed more fully below.

While the universe of research and educational grant opportunities from federal,
state, and local agencies, foundations, professional associations, and industry is very
large, it shrinks quickly when you cull out the agencies, programs, and solicitations
without relevance to your research interests. Once you define your disciplinary area of
expertise and your research interests within that area, your funding universe will
become very small, very quickly, perhaps amounting to only a few agencies, a few
program areas within any particular agency, and fewer solicitations within that program
area. This also applies to foundations and the above-mentioned humanities funders.
As a new faculty member, it is important that you learn how to identify research and
educational funding opportunities immediately upon their announcement. This will gain
you valuable time for preparing your proposal. This added time may give you a decisive
advantage in the competition for these awards. It allows you to assess the

9
requirements for responding to a solicitation, to make a measured decision about
whether or not to pursue it, and to undertake your response with sufficient time
remaining for developing and writing a competitive submittal .
As a new faculty member, most funding opportunities that will fit your research
expertise and interests will likely come from a subset of the over 24 federal agencies
that post upcoming solicitations to Grants.gov, or perhaps a few foundations that fund
research specific to your discipline, e.g., social science, education, humanities. Your
funding focus will likely remain on research grants specific to your discipline. However,
in some disciplines, you may also explore educational grants, or hybrid grants that
integrate research and educational objectives. These are the three most common grant
categories pursued by university faculty. Determining where your search for funding
will begin is a function of your research goals and performance expectations, likely
related to third-year review and promotion and tenure. Your objective is to map these
criteria to possible sources of research support through published solicitations from
federal funding agencies.
Keep in mind, however, that significant funding opportunities for your research may
also come from writing unsolicited proposals, a topic that will be addressed herein as a
specific topic in a subsequent section. For example, roughly 50 percent of NSF and 80
percent of NIH research funding is awarded through the unsolicited proposal process,
e.g., NIH Parent Announcements for unsolicited or investigator-initiated proposals.
Other funding opportunities may come from foundation funding, another topic
addressed separately below.
When first identifying research funding, note the part of the research spectrum
(basic, applied, applications, contract, etc.) that best defines your expertise, capacities,
and interests. This will likely be significantly influenced by departmental expectations
defined in the hiring process, as well as advice on research from an assigned or
requested faculty mentor(s) or a department head or chair. Does the department favor
certain types of grants over others?
For example, departments frequently encourage new faculty in the technical
disciplines to focus first on research grants rather than educational grants such as
undergraduate research, curriculum development, or K-12 partnerships, whereas
education, social, and behavioral sciences departments may have tenure expectations
advanced by these educational grants, particularly in those areas where education is a
research area, e.g., cognition and student learning. Hybrid grants that integrate
research and education vary significantly by agency, but a sufficient number of them will
have a primary focus on research along with an educational component. So you can
use multiple determining factors and criteria such as those mentioned above first to
filter your search parameters for finding funding opportunities and second to narrow
your search to funding opportunities that best fit your career expectations as a new
faculty member.
Another important distinction to make when identifying potential federal funding
agencies is to note how and whether each agency restricts the definition of various
general research areas to one that is unique to that agency’s mission. For example,
10
several federal agencies support research in biochemistry , including NSF and NIH, but
the NSF objectives are not (like those at NIH) conjoined to human diseases or medical
outcomes. Moreover, many of the major umbrella research topic areas funded across
many federal agencies, e.g., climate change, water, sustainability, energy, critical
infrastructures, homeland security, materials, smart grid, etc., are often uniquely and
tightly aligned with their research investment priorities as driven by one or more agency
strategic plans or research roadmaps. Your capacity to note these distinctions is an
important part of your overall funding strategy.
As an individual researcher, you have the most nuanced understanding of the
particular research solicitations or unsolicited opportunities most relevant to your
career objectives. Therefore, it is helpful to recognize that you can do the best job of
identifying funding of possible interest to you by “packing your own funding chute.”
Develop your own search and organizational protocols for finding and categorizing
research funding opportunities. This is very easily done.

11
Funding Agency and What They Fund
Funding Links
National Science Research in science, mathematics,
Foundation (NSF) engineering, social science, and
education. STEM education
initiatives. Fellowships,
instrumentation.
National Institutes of Basic and applied research related
Health (NIH) to human health, including social
RFAs science research. Fellowships,
PAs instrumentation, training grants.
Department of Education Research on education from pre-
IES school through higher education,
OPE adult education
Congressionally Directed Disease-related research. Diseases
Medical Research of focus selected each year by
Program (CDMRP) Congress.
Agency for International Applied research and development
Development (USAID) to evaluate new products, tools,
approaches and interventions
focusing on health concerns in
developing countries (includes
behavioral research).
U.S. Department of Funds a wide range of food and
Agriculture National agriculture research, including
Institute of Food and biotechnology, genomics, pest
Agriculture (NIFA) management, biofuels, childhood
Agriculture and Food obesity and more. Funds
Research Initiative fellowships.
(AFRI)
Economic Development Funds projects to stimulate job
Agency (EDA) creation, economic development,
and innovation (institutional
projects)
National Institute for Funds research related to
Standards and materials, manufacturing,
Technology (NIST) information technology,
measurement, and standards
Department of Defense Fund basic and applied research
- AFOSR related to the mission of each
- ONR service. In addition to physics,
Comments
Largest funder of academic research.
Tend to fund basic research. Will not
fund human disease-related research
or research in the humanities.
Part of Department of Health and
Human Services. Research must have
implications for enhancement of
health, lengthening life, and reduction
of the burdens of illness and disability.
Main research programs funded
through Institute for Education
Research(IES) and Office of
Postsecondary Education (OPE).
Includes grant categories for high-risk
research and new investigators.
Collaborative Research Support
Programs partners with Land Grant
Universities to strengthen agriculture
in developing countries.
Most research funding through AFRI.
Also teams with other agencies (NSF,
DoD) for some grant programs.
Part of Department of Commerce.
Funds collaborations between
university and industry
(entrepreneurship and small business
development)
Part of Department of Commerce.
Most of research is intramural, but
they do funds some extramural
research, particularly in collaboration
with NIST researchers.
Research offices are AFOSR (Air Force),
ARO (Army), ONR (Navy), DARPA (high-
risk, high-payoff research for all
12
Funding Agency and What They Fund Comments
Funding Links
- ARO materials, mathematics, computer services), NSA.
- DARPA science, etc., they may fund some
- NSA life science and psychology (e.g.,
human cognitive and behavioral
modeling)
Agency for Healthcare Funds research to improve quality, Part of Department of Health and
Research and Quality safety, efficiency and effectiveness Human Services. Current funding
(AHRQ) of health care. priorities include health issues of
minorities, health information
technology, health care system
redesign, and more.
Substance Abuse and Implementation grants for mental
Mental Health Services health and substance abuse
Administration services
(SAMSA)
Administration for Funds research to promote the Most of the grants are implementation
Children and Families economic and social well-being of rather than research grants. Be sure
(ACF) families, children, individuals, and to look for grants related to research.
communities. Funds fellowships.
Centers for Disease NIOSH funds research to identify Part of Department of Health and
Control (CDC) occupational populations at risk, Human Services. Procedures are
- National Institute for develop methods for measuring similar to NIH
Occupational Safety exposures to hazards and
and Health detecting adverse health effects,
determine the prevalence and
incidence of occupational hazards,
understand the etiology of
occupational diseases and injuries,
and reduce or eliminate exposures
to hazards.
Environmental Protection Funds research to improve EPA’s STAR grants, fellowships, research,
Agency (EPA) scientific basis for making small business grants
decisions on environmental issues
National Aeronautics and Funds research related to NASA’s Description of programs released
Space Administration space mission (also funds some annually in large ROSES solicitation.
(NASA) STEM education programs)
Department of Energy – Funds basic research related to Offer new investigator-type grants in
Office of Science energy, including advanced the various program areas.
computing, biological and
environmental research, basic
energy sciences, high energy
physics, nuclear physics, and more.
Department of Energy – Funds research related to energy,
National Energy including solid state lighting, smart
Technology Laboratory grid, electric vehicles, clean coal,
(NETL) and other technologies
Department of Energy - Funds research related to clean
13
Funding Agency and What They Fund Comments
Funding Links
Energy Efficiency and energy technologies, including
Renewable Energy (EERE) solar, wind, water, biomass,
geothermal, and hydrogen & fuel
cells.
National Oceanic and Fund research on the structure Part of the Department of Commerce
Atmospheric and behavior of the ocean,
Administration (NOAA) atmosphere, and related
- Office of Education ecosystems. Also fund education
and scholarships related to their
mission.
National Endowment for Funds fellowships and projects in
the Arts (NEA) the arts (including theater, arts
education, dance, literature, folk
arts, music, and more)
National Endowment for Funds fellowships, humanities
the Humanities (NEH) initiatives, collections and
education in the humanities
Institute for Museum and Funds activities including
Library Services (IMLS) professional development,
conservation, collections
management, informal learning,
community engagement, and
more.
Nuclear Regulatory Funds education, minority serving
Commission (NRC) institutions, research on nuclear
materials safety, and other
nuclear-related issues.
Housing and Urban Funds some research on housing Most grants are not research related,
Development (HUD) and urban issues and policy but they do fund some research out of
- Office of University analysis. Mainly funds dissertation the Office of Policy Development and
Programs research. Research (PD&R)
Department of Justice Funds physical and social science
- National Institute of research, development, and
Justice evaluation projects about criminal
justice. Also funds fellowships.

Department of State Most grants fund cultural Funds opportunities for faculty to
- Fulbright Program exchanges, fellowships conduct research abroad.
Department of Funds research to bring advanced
Transportation technologies to the transportation
- Research and system. Funds university
Innovative Technology transportation centers.
Administration (RITA)
Department of the Each of these bureaus funds
Interior projects specific to its mission.
Bureau of Indian Affairs Overall agency goals focus on
Bureau of Land resource protection, resource use,
Management recreation, and serving
14
Funding Agency and What They Fund Comments
Funding Links
Bureau of Ocean Energy communities.
Management, Regulation
and Enforcement
Bureau of Reclamation
National Park Service
Office of Surface Mining,
Reclamation and
Enforcement
U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service
U.S. Geological Survey
Robert Wood Johnson Funds projects to improve the
Foundation health and health care of all
Americans.
Bill and Melinda Gates Funds research related to global Many of the grants are for
Foundation health, poverty and development implementation rather than research.
and education. Be sure to look for opportunities that
target research.

15
To begin with, all federal research agencies post new funding solicitations to Grants.gov.
Grants.gov offers both RSS feeds and email alerts that notify you daily of new grant
opportunities based on advanced search criteria you select when you subscribe to the
alerts (e.g., agency or agencies, funding opportunity number, funding instrument type,
eligibility, or subagency). It is also important to subscribe to the “modified
opportunities alert” that notifies you of any modifications to open solicitations. This is
particularly important for solicitations that stay open for an entire fiscal year, e.g.,
broad agency announcements (BAAs) from the defense agencies that may change
research priority areas during the open period, or make other modifications that impact
how you write the project narrative. Finally, all of these electronic alerts can be saved in
a folder to give you a chronological record of funding directions and recurring open
periods on solicitations published annually.
In some cases, solicitations by federal agencies may also be published to FedConnect
and Federal Register. This will be in addition to and not a replacement for publication
in Grants.gov. For example, the Department of Energy may publish the entire
downloadable solicitation in FedConnect and the Department of Education will publish
in Federal Register, but in both cases a hot link to these sites will be provided in the
Grants.gov announcement.
Moreover, many of the federal research agencies will also have agency-specific RSS
and email alert systems for notification of funding opportunities posted to the agency
website, e.g., NSF and NIH. In other cases, it is helpful to bookmark agency sites that
continuously update funding information, e.g., EPA, DARPA, DOE, ONR, DoED, NIST,
etc.. This is particularly helpful for the federal mission agencies, e.g., DOD, EPA, NOAA,
DARPA, etc., where large, multiple research program areas within a single agency
function with significant autonomy. Also, remember that Google is your friend. A
simple Google search on “RSS feeds at ‘agency name’” or some modification of this
search string specific to your research domain or program office within an agency will
likely retrieve the information you need.
These agency websites are a robust complement to Grants.gov and an excellent
source of funding information and related funding resources. Another advantage to
subscribing to agency-specific electronic alerts is that you can also receive information
such as agency reports, agency presentations, strategic plans and roadmaps, research
alerts, and changing research investment priorities, etc. that can help clarify the
agency’s mission and culture, thereby aiding you to write a proposal that clearly
describes the significance and impact of your research on the mission of the agency.
This is a key competitive factor in writing a successful proposal.

16
Funding from foundations typically represents a much smaller part of a university
research portfolio than does funding from federal agencies. Foundation funding is most
often of interest to a much smaller subset of faculty. In most cases, the application
process differs significantly from those directed to federal agency solicitations. Some
colleges, e.g., education, and some disciplines, e.g., social and behavioral sciences, may
locate more opportunities in foundation funding specific to their research domain, e.g.,
Spencer Foundation, than other colleges and disciplinary departments. Regardless, in
most cases, foundation funding will be at significantly lower levels than funding from
federal agencies. Moreover, foundations have specific protocols for seeking research
and education funding, in some cases including published solicitations with defined
eligibility guidelines specific to preselected university applicants, or ongoing programs in
specific disciplines. For example, the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation funds
chemical sciences and chemical engineering.,
It is particularly important when seeking foundation funding to understand the
mission and agenda of the foundation. For example, the Russell Sage Foundation and
the Social Science Research Council are devoted to research in the social sciences,
whereas the Howard Hughes Medical Institute funds biomedical research grants for
individuals and science education grants for institutions. The W. M. Keck Foundation
focuses on science, engineering, and medical research and undergraduate education.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation funds grants in seven program areas related to
health and health care. However, many smaller foundations will often restrict eligibility
based on mission and agenda-specific factors. Geographic restrictions on eligible
applicants, for example, is one of the more common restrictions for this funding group.
Finding funding from foundations is always tightly linked with becoming
knowledgeable about a foundation’s mission and agenda. This can be accomplished in
several ways, including exploring the foundation website, reading the foundation’s
annual report on funded projects, reading publications of disciplinary colleagues and
scholars whose research has been funded by the foundation, talking to colleagues who
have been funded by the foundation or may have served as a reviewer for the
foundation, and exploring links at the Foundation Center. It is always helpful to talk to
a program officer at a foundation to get a deeper and more nuanced understanding of
its mission-specific agenda and application process. Foundations can range from the
very large (Gates, Ford, Rockefeller) to the very small. Understanding the mission and
agenda of small foundations can sometimes be more challenging, but one good starting
point is the 990 Finder at the Foundation Center website. The 990-PF is the information
return U.S. private foundations file with the Internal Revenue Service. This public
document provides fiscal data for the foundation, names of trustees and officers,
application information, and a complete grants list.

17
Research funding of interest to university faculty in the humanities is most often
focused on scholarly research. In most cases, funding for scholarly research differs
from the research funding sought by faculty in the technical disciplines and the social
and behavioral sciences. It differs as well from the funding sought by institutions with a
humanities mission focus, such as museums or other cultural institutions, and programs
that seek funding to promote the humanities to a wide public audience or advance it
through teacher training. Funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities
(NEH) or the U.S. Department of Education (DoED), for example, often has this
objective. Moreover, depending on the institution, the research interests of faculty in
the humanities may not be as well understood, and hence not as well promoted or
supported by university research offices more familiar with supporting faculty research
in the technical disciplines.
Funding for scholarly research in the humanities is distributed widely across a vast
number of museums, libraries, collections, centers, archives, associations, endowed
programs, and institutes, to name only a few sources. Moreover, compared to the
technical disciplines, the dollar amounts for scholarly research in the humanities are
small and often do not allow for charging indirect costs. In many cases, depending on
institutional protocols, funding to faculty in the humanities goes directly to the faculty
member rather than the institution. How this works on your campus is something to
discuss with your sponsored projects office or similar research support office, often
under the office of vice president for research.
The largest federal funder of the humanities is NEH, but supporting faculty scholarly
research is only one part of how that agency supports the humanities. Other federal
agencies fund humanities-related activities, as opposed to scholarly research, including
U.S. Department of Education and the Department of Interior Heritage Programs. The
Department of State funds scholarly research through the Fulbright Program.
There are several good starting places for finding funding for scholarly work in the
humanities, including Humanities Funding and Research by the Humanities Resource
Center Online. Many universities and humanities centers at universities have excellent
web sites that offer exhaustive listings of opportunities for research funding in the
humanities. For example, the following websites provide a good starting point that will
quickly become a cascade of opportunities as you follow embedded links: Fellowship
and Grant Opportunities for Faculty Humanities and Social Sciences; Humanities
Funding Sources A-to-Z; Duke University Funding Alerts; Humanities Funding Listed by
Johns Hopkins University; and ASU Institute for Humanities Research.

18
Locating funding for your research can be a frustrating search if your discipline or
research topic area is not well supported, or not supported at all, by any federal agency.
Most federal agencies fund either basic research or mission-driven research specific to
that agency. Given this predetermined funding landscape, and the mission-specific
opportunities it offers in terms of funding solicitations, it is not uncommon for some
faculty to come to the challenging realization that their research interests and expertise
do not map to any open funding solicitations at any of the federal agencies. However,
they are still faced with institutional expectations for research along their academic
career path, particularly at third-year review and in the tenure and promotion process.
Fortunately, many avenues, in addition to federal agency solicitations, lead to funding
for your research interests. For example, consider the following as some possible routes
to follow for funding success.

Explore Research Collaborations

As a synthesis of research capacities, collaborations hold the potential for research
funding opportunities that might not otherwise be funded as discrete topic areas by
individual researchers on single-PI grants. However, true research partnerships
regardless of size come about from taking the time to establish the groundwork for
collaboration through networking at conferences, working with and engaging mentors
and colleagues, publishing jointly, and making a keen assessment of the “value-added”
characteristics that research collaborations bring to any given initiative. Moreover,
collaborations require creative and integrative thinking about the synergy that occurs at
the intersection of your research with the research of potential partners. So take the
time to create your own personalized “partnership roadmap,” including identifying the
possible benefits your research expertise might bring to that of your colleagues, on your
campus or on other campuses.

Find a Place for Your Research on Large Proposals

Many center-level proposals require multiple research strands. In some cases, these
proposals may require programmatic components outside the core technical or
scientific domains that enable the center to meet the goals and objectives of the
funding agency. For example, topics such as public outreach and societal benefits, or
ethics, public policy, communications, public or stakeholder surveys, workforce
planning, community and cultural impacts, evaluation and assessment, and the like, may
be required by the sponsor to complement the technical research core of the center.
Regardless, in many cases, center-level proposals require the inclusion of programmatic
components that represent unique and highly specialized research expertise from
faculty in other disciplines in order to fully respond to the agency research objectives
and thus be competitive for funding.

19
 Research deans and department heads in various colleges and university-level
professional staff in various VPR offices can serve as a possible source of information
about the types of center-level proposals being developed or planned on your campus,
or in partnership with other universities.

Review Websites of Researchers in Your Disciplinary Area to Find Funding

References
University websites exist for almost every conceivable disciplinary area and research
topic with a home at an academic institution. These range from comprehensive
websites of centers and institutes to websites by interdisciplinary and affinity groups, to
the personal websites of individual faculty. Surfing the websites of faculty whose
research is in your topic area can have great benefit in terms of a deeper and more
nuanced understanding of possible ways you can find funding for your research. In
some cases, websites of research groups in an area that mirrors your own research
domain may identify sources of research funding by project area, agency, foundation,
and industry.

Review Journal Articles for References to Funding

Journals and publications in your academic field and specialty area may include authors’
acknowledgements of support from a funding agency or agencies that made the
research possible. Look to those acknowledgements as a potential funding source for
your own research.

Find Funding from Business and Industry

Identify business, industry, or consulting firms that provide client services that would
benefit from your research expertise or specific research topic area (remember Google
is your friend here). Perhaps you will identify a consulting firm that advises township
clients on wetlands or ecosystem restoration processes or policies required as part of
plans for growing communities and annexing former rural areas. As in all examples
here, the key is to know how to describe your research, identify a potential funder that
would benefit from your research, and pursue discussions that focus on the added value
your research brings to their particular enterprise.

Find Foundation Funding

Funding from foundations holds many advantages for those whose research topic areas
and expertise do not map well to federal agency funding. It is typically the first
alternative option researchers think of when they are unable to find federal agency
funding. The process of seeking foundation funding resembles that of seeking federal
funding in several key respects. Your primary goal is to map your research and
programmatic interests, capacities, and ideas to the research and programmatic
interests and mission of the foundation. Therefore, be sure to research and understand
the mission, culture, and investment agenda of the foundation, and learn the role of
20
the program officer at the foundation during the application and review process.
Importantly, opportunities for funding at foundations exist at many scales, including
national, regional, state, and local foundations. Foundations will have domains of
interest and a mission agenda driving their investments. Your job is to explore those
mission and agenda domains in your search for foundations that fund programmatic
areas to which you bring competitive expertise and offer an idea of interest to the
foundation. Do not overlook small regional or state foundations in your search.

Find Funding from NGOs, Associations, and Professional Groups

Another avenue to explore begins with mapping your research interests, expertise, and
particularly an idea you have to the agenda of local, regional, or national associations
and professional groups, special interest groups, nongovernmental organizations,
advocacy groups, community groups, and the like. The goal is to find an organization
with a mission and agenda that could benefit from your research. This may seem like a
very open-ended challenge made more troublesome by the vagueness of a starting
point. However, the stepwise process is generic to any research funding search: (1)
define your research, (2) map it to the interests, mission, and agenda of a possible
funder; and (3) start discussions or meet with the potential funder to explore how your
research expertise can bring value-added benefits to its mission.

Municipal, County, and State Governments

Municipal, township, county, and state government agencies and offices often have
mission or operational objectives that can benefit from research, particularly applied or
applications-based research, that can help that agency better serve the public. Keep in
mind that successful public-serving agencies must function as problem solvers, and
good research is one ingredient of successful problem solving in a host of areas. For
example, councils of government at both the regional and local levels along the coastal
Gulf of Mexico may have an interest in the disaster preparedness protocols established
by an assistant professor of political science as part of her doctoral dissertation.
Similarly, coastal communities along Lake Michigan may need surveys and analysis of
the impact of wind farms on coastal ecosystems and flyways that attract tourists to the
area. While these examples abound, the key task for you is to creatively envision the
role your research could potentially play in helping government agencies serve the
public by helping the agency to better solve problems.

Community Partnerships
Many community organizations have mission objectives that could potentially benefit
from a research perspective, particularly in the applied and applications-based social
and behavioral sciences and community health. Community organizations often have
agendas specific to local or regional needs, and may have a focus on a range of issues,
including health disparities, educational attainment, environmental issues, healthy
communities, domestic violence, and the like. Learn about local and regional

21
community organizations to discover how your research interests and expertise may
contribute to the ability of a specific organization to offer better services.

22
Predominantly Undergraduate Institutions (PUIs) usually don’t have the same level of
research infrastructure as research-intensive institutions, and this can present a special
challenge to faculty in science who conduct laboratory research requiring expensive
laboratory equipment. If you find yourself in this situation, you can use several
strategies to address this challenge.
If the equipment you need is not very expensive (e.g., $50K or less), and it is clearly
required to conduct a proposed project, you may be able request funding for the
instrument as part of the project budget. Discuss this possibility with the program
officer before submitting the proposal.
If the equipment is needed by a number of faculty at your institution or at other
institutions in your region, you should consider teaming to submit a proposal for an
instrumentation grant. There are a number of such grants, the most widely known of
which is the NSF Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) program. These grants fund
research instruments up to $4 million and generally require multiple users, preferably
from multiple departments and institutions. Many of these grants (particularly those for
under $100K) have been awarded to PUIs, so if you have the right elements in place, you
can be competitive for these grants. Other grants that fund instrumentation are listed at
the end of this chapter. NSF also funds shared-use instrumentation through the
Research in Undergraduate Institutions (RUI) program. To be competitive for most of
these grants, the instrument should have multiple users, many of which have strong
research records (and in some cases, such as the NIH Shared Instrumentation grants,
explicit requirements concern the source of funding for the instrument users’ research).
If you are the only researcher in your institution who will need the instrument in
question and you’ll need the instrument on an intermittent basis, you should consider
looking to other universities that have the instrument and determine whether they
would be willing to allow you access. This may not be as difficult as it might first appear.
It’s quite possible that the instrument was purchased on a grant such as the MRI, and as
part of the proposal the PI committed to sharing access to the instrument. If this is the
case, their proposal included a management plan, which probably described procedures
for allowing outside researchers use of the instrument (usually for a reasonable use fee
to cover consumables and technician time), and they may have committed to encourage
use by faculty from PUIs and minority-serving institutions. You can search for such an
instrument by looking through NSF’s awards for MRIs as well as by networking with
fellow researchers.
A related strategy is to find a colleague with access to the desired instrument who
has a current NSF research grant. Propose a collaboration in which they submit a
proposal for a Research Opportunity Award (ROA) supplement to their original NSF
research grant. These FOA supplements fund faculty from PUIs to visit the NSF-funded
researchers’ lab, usually during the summer, to conduct research. Not only can the ROA
23
grant help you gain access to the needed instrument for a summer but it can also help
you develop a collaboration that can continue beyond the life of the original grant. Also
keep in mind that data generated using your collaborator’s instrument can be used as
part of an MRI proposal if you later decide to pursue a grant to fund an instrument at
your institution.
If you need more regular access to the instrument, traveling to someone else’s lab
may not be practical. In that case, you might investigate whether it’s possible to get a
used instrument as a donation or at a reduced price. If the instrument you need is
frequently used in industry labs, you may find a company that is planning to upgrade to
a newer instrument and would be happy to take the tax write-off by donating their used
instrument to a university. Often, connections can be made with these companies
through research colleagues or through alumni who work at the company. (If you decide
to pursue this approach, be sure to check with your university’s development office to
determine the procedures you need to follow when requesting such a donation.) Used
instruments might also be available for sale through the vendor or other venues (you
can even find some instruments on e-bay, although caution would be advisable). Note
also that DOE has a program that makes used equipment from their labs available to
schools and universities (LEDP).
You should keep in mind, however, that the cost of purchasing a lab instrument is
only one portion of the expense involved. You also have to find a place to put it that
meets space, power, water, and other requirements. In addition, significant operation
costs (e.g. consumable materials such as liquid nitrogen) as well as maintenance
expenses often apply. This is why it’s important to enlist the support of your department
head and possibly your dean. Make your case to them that having this instrument will
benefit not only your research, but the institution and its mission. Will you involve
students in your research? Will you incorporate the instrument or the data generated by
the instrument in the curriculum? Will having the instrument help position you to
publish and compete for research funding? All of these things will strengthen your case
and perhaps convince your department head and dean to commit funds and space to
support the instrument you need.

Grants that Fund Instrumentation

(Note that not all of these programs stage competitions every year. Program activity can
vary markedly depending on agency funding priorities. If it’s not clear when the next
competition will be held, contact the funding agency to find out.)
Program: Major Research Instrumentation Award (MRI)
Funding Agency: National Science Foundation (NSF)
Amt: $100K - $4M; < $100K OK for non-PhD granting
3 proposals per institution (max 2 acquisition)
Cost Share: 30% except for non-PhD granting and some disciplines
Support the acquisition, through purchase, upgrade, or development, of major state-of-the-art instrumentation for
research, research training, and integrated research/education activities at institutions. Proposals will be considered
for instrumentation used for any NSF-supported field of science, mathematics, and engineering. Two types:
acquisition and development.

24
Instrument Development for Biological Research (IDBR)
Funding Agency: NSF Directorate of Biological Sciences
Amt: not specified
No limit on number of proposals
No cost share required
Accepts two types of proposals: A) Innovation proposals for the development of novel instrumentation that provides
new research capabilities, or that significantly improves current technologies by at least an order of magnitude in
fundamental aspects (such as accuracy, precision, resolution, throughput, flexibility, breadth of application, cost of
construction, operation costs, or user-friendliness); and B) Bridging Proposals for transforming, ‘one of a kind'
prototypes or high-end instruments into devices that are broadly available and utilizable without loss of capacity.

Earth Sciences: Instrumentation and Facilities (EAR/IF)

Funding Agency:NSF Directorate for Geo-sciences, Division of Earth Sciences
No limit on number of proposals
No cost share required
The Instrumentation and Facilities Program in the Division of Earth Sciences (EAR/IF) supports meritorious requests
for infrastructure that promotes research and education in areas supported by the Division (see
http://www.nsf.gov/div/index.jsp?div=EAR). EAR/IF will consider proposals for: 1) Acquisition or Upgrade of Research
Equipment that will advance laboratory and field investigations, and student research training opportunities in the
Earth sciences. The maximum request is $1M. The maximum request for upgrade of research group computing
facilities is $75,000; 2) Development of New Instrumentation, Analytical Techniques or Software that will extend
current research and research training capabilities in the Earth sciences. The maximum request is $1M; 3) Support of
National or Regional Multi-User Facilities that will make complex and expensive instruments or systems of
instruments broadly available to the Earth sciences research and student communities; 4) Support for Early Career
Investigators to facilitate expedient operation of new research infrastructure proposed by the next generation of
leaders in the Earth Sciences. This opportunity allows for submission of a proposal for Acquisition or Upgrade of
Research Equipment that includes budget line items associated with support of a new full-time technician who will be
dedicated to manage the instrument(s) being requested. Any request for technical support under this opportunity is
limited to three years duration. Maximum request is $1M.
Planned research uses of requested instruments, software, and facilities must include basic research on Earth
processes SUPPORTED BY THE DIVISION OF EARTH SCIENCES.

Chemistry Research Instrumentation and Facilities (CRIF) – currently suspended

Funding Agency: NSF Directorate for MPS, Division of Chemistry
Maximum: TBD
No limit on number of proposals
Cost share: none
provides funds to research institutions and consortia thereof for the purchase of multi-user instruments and for the
establishment and support of multi-user research facilities in the chemical sciences.

Archaeometry Awards
Funding Agency: NSF Directorate of Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences, Archaeology
Funding: $50K - $400K approx
The Archaeology Program recognizes three broad classes of archaeometric proposals: (1) proposals to support
laboratories which provide archaeometric services; (2) proposals to develop and refine archaeometric techniques;
and (3) proposals to apply existing analytic techniques to specific bodies of archaeological materials. "Laboratory
support" and "technique development" projects are included within the Archaeometry competition. "Technique
application" proposals are best evaluated in a more strictly archaeological context and therefore should be submitted
to the "senior" research competition.

Astronomical Sciences Advanced Technologies and Instrumentation (ATI)

Funding Agency: NSF MPS Directorate, Division of Astronomical Sciences

25
the development and construction of state-of-the-art detectors and instruments for the visible, infrared, and radio
regions of the spectrum. These include, and are not limited to, the application of new hardware and software
technology and innovative techniques in astronomical research, interferometric imaging and adaptive optics.
Shared Instrumentation Grant (SIG)
Funding Agency: NIH
$100K - $600K
No limit on number of proposals
No cost share required
Funds applications from groups of NIH-supported investigators to purchase or upgrade a single item of expensive,
specialized, commercially available instrumentation or an integrated system. Types of instruments supported include
confocal and electron microscopes, biomedical imagers, mass spectrometers, DNA sequencers, biosensors, cell-
sorters, X-ray diffraction systems, and NMR spectrometers among others. A major user group of three or more
investigators must be identified. A minimum of three major users must be Principal Investigators on NIH peer-
reviewed research grants at the time of the application and award.

Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP)

Funding Agency: DoD agencies
Amt: 50K - $1M
No limit on number of proposals
No cost share required
DURIP is a multi-agency DoD program within the University Research Initiative designed to improve the capabilities of
U.S. institutions of higher education to conduct research and to educate scientists and engineers in areas important
to national defense by providing funds for the acquisition of research equipment. [Note: To be competitive,
applicants should currently be funded by DoD and the instrument requested should support those funded projects.]

High End Instrumentation Grant

Funding Agency: NIH
Amt: $750K - $2M
No limit on number of proposals
Cost share not required
applications from groups of NIH-supported investigators to purchase a single major item of equipment to be used for
biomedical research that costs at least $750,000. The maximum award is $2,000,000. Instruments in this category
include, but are not limited to, structural and functional imaging systems, macromolecular NMR spectrometers, high-
resolution mass spectrometers, cryoelectron microscopes and supercomputers.

National Institute of Food and Agriculture Equipment Grants

Funding Agency: USDA Agriculture and Food Research Initiative
Note: equipment grants are described in conjunction with other types of grants in each RFA.
Equipment Grants are designed to strengthen the research, education, and/or extension capacity of institutions by
funding the purchase of one major piece of equipment. These grants are not intended to replace requests for
equipment in individual project applications. Rather, they are intended to help fund items of equipment that will
upgrade infrastructure.

Energy-related Laboratory Equipment (LEDP) Program

Funding Agency: DOE
Deadline open
No cost share
The Energy-Related Laboratory Equipment (LEDP) Grant Program was established by the United States Department of
Energy (DOE) to grant available used equipment to institutions of higher education for energy-related research.
Equipment is listed as it becomes available on a searchable website.

26
The RFP is an invitation by a funding agency to submit proposals on research topics of
interest to the agency. It contains the key information you will need to develop and
write a competitive proposal. To be competitive, your proposal must respond fully to
an agency’s submission process, program objectives, review criteria, budget guidelines,
and other requirements specific to the program. It is important to read the RFP
carefully and in its entirety, including review criteria and all referenced documents.
Writing a competitive proposal requires that you understand the RFP for what it is--an
expression of agency interest in a specifically defined research area. The RFP is almost
never a perfect mirror of your research interests. From the funding agency’s
perspective, the RFP is a non-negotiable listing of research performance expectations
reflecting the agency’s mission, goals, objectives, and investment priorities that you
must meet to be funded. The RFP is not meant as a menu or smorgasbord inviting you
to address some topics and review criteria but not others. A flawed understanding of
the requirements of the RFP, or the agency guidelines defining the unsolicited proposal
process and the role they play in structuring a competitive research narrative is one of
the more common reasons proposals are poorly reviewed and declined by funding
agencies.
The competitiveness of your proposal will depend on how well you understand the
RFP as a very detailed expression of an agency’s interest in a specific research topic
area. Once you clearly understand the agency’s objectives, the next step is to map your
expertise to the RFP to determine whether or not you should respond to the solicitation.
If your interests and expertise do not map tightly to an RFP, it is wise not to submit and
wait for a more appropriate solicitation. Invest your time, resources, and energy
wisely—they are your most valuable assets and they must not be squandered. Having a
good idea is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for successful funding. Funding
agencies are seeking exciting ideas clearly stated that make a compelling case that your
expertise will advance the research priorities of the sponsor .
The RFP needs to be closely analyzed and understood as an integrated whole. This
includes understanding the agency’s research objectives, desired outcomes or
deliverables, the way in which those research objectives will be reviewed, and any
referenced strategic plans or research roadmaps that define the research context in
more detail. RFPs are written documents, and, like all written documents, they are not
always perfectly clear. Any uncertainties you have regarding the meaning or intent of
any portion of the RFP need to be resolved early in the proposal process to ensure your
proposal research narrative fully responds to the guidelines. You can often resolve
uncertainties through repeated, closer readings of the RFP, discussions with colleagues
who have been funded by the agency in similar research areas, or by contacting the
program officer directly. The latter is often the best option.
The same general principles will apply in terms of following agency guidelines for
the submission of unsolicited proposals.
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The RFP also plays a key role in proposal organization by establishing the order, required
level of detail, and focus of the research narrative in meeting the goals, objectives,
desired outcomes, and review criteria established by the funding agency. It is a good
idea to simply copy and paste the RFP’s key sections, research objectives, and review
criteria into a beginning draft narrative. This allows the RFP to serve as an
organizational template for the full proposal. It ensures that subsequent draft
iterations of the research narrative will be continuously calibrated to the guidelines
and fully responsive to all of the sponsor’s requirements. For example, an RFP will
often contain a detailed description defining the agency’s objectives for the program
(e.g., goals, objectives, performance timeline, outcomes, research management,
evaluation, etc.) that must be addressed in the full proposal narrative. This detail,
including review criteria, can be copied and pasted into the first draft of the proposal
itself. This RFP-based proposal template ensures your narrative responses are complete
and answer every question, explicit or implicit, in the guidelines. In this way, the first
draft of the proposal will fully mirror the program solicitation requirements.
This copy and paste process of transforming the RFP into a narrative template helps
ensure that you address several elements key to a successful proposal at the beginning,
and adhere to them throughout the writing process. Using this approach, you will
ensure that the proposal narrative:
 fully responds to all requested information,
 offers information in the order requested,
 provides the required level of detail,
 integrates review criteria into the narrative, and
 makes a complete and compelling case for the significance of your research.

If the RFP refers to any publications, reports, or workshops, it is important to read those
materials, analyze how that work has influenced the agency’s vision of the program, and
cite those publications where appropriate in the research narrative.

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Funding agencies do not passively fund research projects that are disconnected from a
long-term, well considered research agenda and research investment strategy. Basic
research agencies(e.g., NSF, NIH) often see themselves as leaders in a national dialogue
on research topics and directions, and as key players in defining and driving that
national agenda for fundamental research. The federal mission agencies (e.g., DOE,
DoD, DARPA, EPA, NASA, NOAA, etc.) fund research, either basic or applied, that falls
within the scope of their mission objectives and brings value-added benefits to that
mission. This can be a source of surprise, and even frustration, to applicants new to the
research funding enterprise, who may believe that a good idea alone will merit funding,
regardless whether it connects to a particular agency’s mission and investment
priorities. However, agencies fund only very good ideas that clearly advance their
mission, vision, and strategic research plan.
Therefore, the more knowledgeable you become about a funding agency’s mission,
strategic plans, research culture, investment priorities, and the rationale behind them,
the better able you will be to write a more compelling and competitive proposal
narrative. This agency-specific knowledge allows you to more convincingly describe
how your proposed research is relevant to the research objectives spelled out in the
solicitation, as well as place your research in the broader context of the agency’s
strategic research plan. How well you convince reviewers that your research will play a
key role in advancing the agency’s mission-critical objectives as listed in the
solicitation, or in the guidelines for unsolicited submissions, will determine whether
your proposal is funded.
Many research programs funded by federal agencies, and some private foundations,
grow out of an evolving consensus among the national research community on the most
promising future directions in specific research topic areas. These directions and
priorities, in turn, are translated into funding opportunities at the agencies, or are
incorporated into an agency’s strategic plans and given an investment priority level
within the agency. These reports may be published at the National Academies, for
example, or be posted to agency websites. (All National Academy reports are
downloadable in pdf format for free.) In many cases, these reports and studies will be
cited with a URL link in the solicitation or program guidelines. It is always wise to review
these reports, particularly the executive summary, to become more knowledgeable and
better informed on possible persuasive arguments you might advance in your research
narrative. These reports can help you enhance the perceived significance of your
research by clarifying for program officers and reviewers the value of your research to
the agency mission.
Educational programs targeted at universities, e.g., curriculum reform or
undergraduate research, are often developed through the same process. It is not
uncommon, for example, for reports of the National Academies, the American
29
Association for the Advancement of Science, or similar associations to significantly
influence funding directions at one or more agencies, and for those reports to form the
underpinnings of subsequent solicitations. Understanding the origins, underpinnings,
and rationale behind funding solicitations will help you better frame your claims of
research merit and thereby better position you to write a competitive proposal
narrative.
Some agencies, such as the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of
Health, are composed of directorates and divisions, or institutes and centers, and these,
too, have defined missions, strategic plans, investment priorities, and cultures, at times
almost acting as autonomous funding agencies in themselves. It may, therefore, also be
necessary to understand the mission, culture, and priorities of the particular
organizational unit to which you will be submitting your proposal. Other agencies, e.g.,
DOE, NOAA, DoD, NASA, etc., may often have very dispersed mission areas with multiple
research offices acting autonomously. In these cases, it is important to familiarize
yourself sufficiently with the agency and program websites in order to become very
knowledgeable about the mission, culture, and research investment priorities of that
part of the agency that most fits your research expertise and interests.
A successful proposal allows the funding agency to form a partnership with the
submitting institution and principal investigator that will help carry out the agency’s
vision, mission, and strategic research goals. As the applicant, you must understand the
nature of this partnership and the expectations of the funding agency, both during
proposal development and throughout a funded project. Analysis of the funding agency
helps you better understand several key elements common to every competitive
proposal narrative:

 Who is the audience (e.g., agency program officers and reviewers) and how are
they best characterized in terms of the expertise they bring to the review
process?
 What is the best way to address them?
 What is a fundable idea and how does it support the agency’s research
investment priorities?
 How are claims of research uniqueness and innovation best supported in the
proposal text and connected to the agency’s research objectives?
 How do you best communicate your passion, excitement, commitment, and
capacity to perform the proposed research to review panels and program
officers?

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The role of the Program Officer (sometimes called the Program Director or Technical
Point of Contact) varies markedly among funding agencies. In some agencies, they
dictate the priorities of their program and may have almost sole control over which
proposals get funded. In other agencies, their role may be more administrative, and
they may have very little influence on the funding decision. An important part of getting
to know the funding agency to which you plan to apply is to determine the role of the
Program Officer for that agency and the culture regarding relationships with the
Program Officer. At the Department of Defense, for example, it’s virtually impossible to
get funded if you haven’t talked to the Program Officer. At NSF, most Program Officers
see themselves as mentors to new faculty and are happy to provide advice and
guidance. At NIH, PIs are often funded without ever having talked to the Program
Officer. In some foundations, the Program Officers are so busy that they may discourage
you from contacting them.

When to Contact the Program Officer

There are several reasons to contact the Program Officer: (1) there is a point of
ambiguity in the solicitation that you need to clarify; (2) you need to determine whether
your project is appropriate for the funding agency or program and perhaps solicit advice
on how best to present your idea; or (3) you need to get to know the Program Officer
and s/he needs to get to know you (this applies to some agencies and not others).
Timidity is never rewarded in the grants process, and ambiguities are always
punished. The clearly understood solicitation forms the foundation of the successful
proposal. If you don’t clearly understand the research expectations in a solicitation, or if
you feel the solicitation is ambiguous on some details or requirements, which can occur,
call the program officer for clarification before you start writing. When you email or call
a program officer, be informed. Questions should be based on a repeated reading of
the solicitation after which clarification is still needed or ambiguities remain. You cannot
write a successful proposal narrative based on an ambiguous understanding of any
portion of the RFP. If you don’t clarify ambiguities in the RFP, they will metastasize to
the research narrative and almost certainly result in a declined proposal. Program
officers usually are happy to respond to queries by potential applicants, especially
questions that are thoughtful, clearly stated, and focused on the research topic. Do not
ask the program officer to make speculative comments on the likelihood that your idea
will be funded, or to engage in similarly inappropriate discussions. But do call them to
resolve any ambiguities you feel exist in the RFP, or to develop a more nuanced
understanding of the agency’s intent and your potential fit to it. (One caveat is that the
Department of Defense often forbids Program Officers from talking to potential
applicants after the RFP has been released. However, this is not always the case, and if

31
you need clarification of a point in the RFP, an administrative contact may be able to
answer your question.)
For many funding agencies, particularly NSF, it isn’t always obvious which program
within the agency your research fits, and submitting to the wrong program can doom a
good proposal. While many useful resources on the NSF website can help you
understand the research interests of each program, it’s always a good idea to contact
the Program Officer to discuss your research and the specific interests of the program.
In addition, NSF Program Officers will often point you to particular solicitations and
discuss any recent changes in the focus of their program. The same is true of many
other funding agencies.
Getting to know the Program Officer and making sure they know you and your
research can also be very important at many agencies. The Department of Defense and
many of the mission agencies (such as NASA, NIST, and NOAA) see externally-funded
researchers as collaborators helping them to meet the needs of their agency and
program. For that reason, you need to develop an understanding of their needs and a
relationship with the agency and program in order to be competitive for funding. As
mentioned above, NSF Program Officers often see themselves as mentors to early-
career researchers; they want you to submit a high-quality proposal and encourage PIs
to contact them for information about what NSF is seeking and what you need to do to
submit a competitive proposal.

How to Contact the Program Officer

Even when Program Officers encourage PIs to contact them, that doesn’t mean the
contact will go smoothly. Program Officers tend to be very busy and to travel quite a bit.
For that reason, it’s usually a good idea to send an email with a short summary of your
research idea and ask to schedule a phone conversation. Give the Program Officer at
least a week to respond, and if you don’t hear back, try again. Program Officers typically
get a large number of emails each day, and yours may have gotten lost in the inbox. If,
after several attempts, you don’t hear anything, it could be that your Program Officer
prefers to communicate by voice mail, so you might try leaving a phone message. If that
doesn’t work, look to see whether there is another point of contact for the program and
try that.
Before you talk to the Program Officer, be sure to do your homework. At the top on
Program Officers’ list of pet peeves is PIs who call them up and expect the Program
Officer to read the solicitation to them. As was mentioned above, read the solicitation
or program description thoroughly. Also read any background material that was cited in
the solicitation, and look in the funding database to see what other projects have been
funded by the program. When you talk to the Program Officer, ask open-ended
questions and listen carefully. Take what the Program Officer has to say seriously, even
if what she’s telling you is not what you want to hear. For example, if the Program
Officer says your research doesn’t fit his program, it’s much better to accept that fact
and talk to him about other programs where it might fit or how your research project
could be modified rather than spend time on a proposal that’s unlikely to succeed.
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 In addition, many Program Officers attend conferences in their field. If you happen
to be at such a conference, take the opportunity to introduce yourself to the Program
Officer if you have the opportunity.

33
Specific review criteria and review processes differ from agency to agency, as well as by
program within an agency, and by type of solicitation. But the core, generic questions
program officers and reviewers want answered can be simply stated:
 What do you propose to do?
 Why it is it important—what is its significance?
 Why are you able to do it?
 How will you do it?
 How does it contribute to and advance the research interests of the agency, or
the field?

These simple questions may be expressed in various ways by different agencies and
programs, and more specific details will often be requested in the solicitation or
program announcement (e.g., NSF has both overarching review criteria and program-
specific review criteria), but ultimately most review criteria can be distilled down to
some equivalent version of these simple questions. Your challenge when writing for
reviewers is to answer these questions in a clear, convincing, and compelling way that is
easily accessible and understood by the reviewers.
Solicitations may often contain a fairly long listing of review criteria specific to the
program, but if you keep these core criteria in mind while writing your project narrative,
you will better infuse your narrative with the key arguments, details, internal
connections, and explanations all reviewers will look to in making their evaluation of
your research, regardless of discipline, agency, or foundation.
Your proposal typically will be read by two basic types of reviewers: those who are
expert, or at least knowledgeable, in your research domain, and the those who are not.
The program officer will play a key role in this process as well, but that role will be
agency specific (e.g., at NSF reviewer inputs are advisory to the program officer,
whereas at NIH the percentile score is key to your success). Unless you are confident
you know otherwise, when writing to reviewers, write for the intelligent reader and
not the expert. Remember you are most likely writing to a panel of reviewers, each of
whom will be selected for a needed expertise. In all cases:
 You must craft a persuasive argument presenting the merit, significance, rigor,
and relevance of your research that makes the reviewers want to fund it;
 You must convince reviewers you have the capacity to perform, and the
institutional infrastructure to support your research;
 You must extend your argument to discuss the likely impact your research will
have in advancing the field and creating new knowledge, both in your research
area and possibly in other research fields as well; and

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  When writing to federal mission agencies, you must demonstrate to the program
managers and reviewers that your research advances the mission of the agency.
The author of a funded proposal has successfully accomplished the following basic
goals of writing for or with reviewers in mind:
 Ensured the reviewers were intrigued and excited about the proposed research;
 Understood its significance;
 Understood that existing research enhances the likely success of the proposed
effort;
 Understood how the proposed research will be accomplished; and
 Developed confidence in the researcher’s capacity to perform.

The proposal review is the most important factor influencing the likelihood your
proposal will be funded. More than one person typically will review your proposal –
these may be personnel at the agency or foundation, peer reviewers from academia,
other people from outside the funding agency, or a combination. Reviews may be
conducted on an ad hoc basis or by a standing panel. Reviewers will evaluate the
proposal based on review criteria, both explicit (stated in the solicitation or other
agency documents) and implicit (commonly held but unstated expectations held by the
reviewers). Understanding how the reviewers will evaluate your proposal is critical to
learning how to write a winning proposal. This, by the way, is not a simple task. It is a
learned skill and, once mastered, a very valuable one.

Writing for Reviewers—Generic Narrative Tips

 Sell your proposal to a good researcher but not an expert;
 Write to all the reviewers on the panel, as some review panels may not have an
expert in your field, or panels may be blended for multidisciplinary initiatives;
 Keep in mind that proposals are not journal articles; proposals must be user
friendly and offer reviewers a compelling and memorable narrative;
 Proposals are not mystery novels. Reveal the significance of your research
quickly, not at the conclusion;
 Check carefully for sloppy errors in language, usage, grammar, and logic, which
reviewers may assume will translate into sloppy errors in your research;
 Write a compelling project summary (or abstract) and narrative introduction:
o This is where you must capture the interest of reviewers and win them
over by making them intrigued enough to want to read your entire
proposal closely and with interest;
o Define the significance of the core ideas quickly, clearly, and concisely;
o Describe the connectedness of the core ideas to specific research activities
and outcomes, and advance your ideas with sufficient detail to make your
research memorable after the proposal has been read.

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Each funding agency develops review criteria and a review process that best serve the
mission of the agency, as well as the requirement of each solicitation. In the case of
unsolicited proposals, the review criteria will most often be addressed in the agency
guidelines for submitting unsolicited proposals, or in other agency documents. For
example, BAAs from DoD agencies that are open for a year or more will typically have a
section on the review process for unsolicited proposals as well as solicited proposals.
Agencies usually post review criteria and review processes on agency websites and
include them within program solicitations, submission guidelines, and other documents.
Two of the major funders of university research, NSF and NIH, have developed elaborate
and comprehensive information on their websites about the review criteria and process.
Agencies typically develop two general kinds of review criteria: first, overarching
criteria that apply across the agency to every grant application, for example, intellectual
merit and broader impacts at NSF; significance, approach, innovation, quality of
investigators, environment, and overall impact at NIH; or, at defense research
laboratories, scientific and technical merit and the contributions of the research to the
agency mission. Depending on the agency, not all overarching review criteria are
weighted equally in terms of importance; for example, some mission agencies may list
them in descending order of relative importance.
The second type of review criteria apply specifically to the particular program and
may be very detailed in terms of expected project objectives and outcomes. The
overarching review criteria of any agency typically are clearly stated and well explicated
over time. For example, the “broader impacts” criterion, one of two overarching review
criteria at NSF, has been much written about and discussed with detailed examples on
the NSF website, as well as at various NSF workshops.
Solicitation-specific review criteria, however, especially on new programs, may not
have been as fully vetted for possible ambiguities, in which case it becomes important
to discuss the criteria with a program officer. If you are uncertain about the meaning of
one or more review criteria, it is important to clarify the agency’s intent with an agency
program officer, or perhaps a colleague who has been well funded by the agency. In
summary, it is important to identify these review criteria, understand exactly how the
agency defines them, and determine the relative weight (if applicable) the agency
assigns to each criterion.

The Review Process

The review process itself can vary significantly from one agency to the next and from
one program to the next. It may be conducted in an ad hoc fashion or by panel.
Reviewers may be experienced researchers and academics (a “peer review”); the
reviewer may consist only of the program officer or a group of personnel from the
funding agency (an “internal review”); or they may be a combine these two groups.

36
Furthermore, reviews may be written independently and mailed in, or reviews may be
conducted by a panel of reviewers who convene at the funding agency (often called a
“panel review”). Reviewers may be experts in your field; they may be experts in related
fields; or they may have little or no knowledge of your field. They may be a standing
committee or the membership may change. A writer who knows the backgrounds of
the people who will review his or her proposal and crafts the proposal with those
reviewers in mind obviously will have a substantial advantage over a writer who blindly
writes a proposal without knowing the kind of audience he or she is trying to convince.
The most comprehensive information on the agency review process will come
from visiting the agency website and talking with agency program officers as well as
with colleagues who have served as reviewers for the agency, served as rotating
program officers at the agency, or who have been well funded by the agency. Below are
descriptions of procedures used by some of the major research funding agencies.

37
One of the best ways to get a successful start in finding and competing for research
funding is to draw on the knowledge of others who have been successful. Seek out
faculty in your field who have succeeded at winning research funding. These may be
colleagues in your department, your former advisor, or colleagues at other institutions.
First, offer to take them out to lunch if they’ll allow you to pick their brain about
funding. Most faculty are delighted to talk about their experiences and share their hard-
won knowledge. Ask them: what agencies and programs fund our kind of research?
What are their expectations in terms of publications, preliminary results, type of
research, etc.? How does the funding agency operate (i.e., what is its culture, mission,
investment priorities, and research strategic plan)? Have you been a reviewer for these
agencies or served as a program officer? If so, are there common mistakes that you see
in proposals that you’ve reviewed? How did you get your first few grants? What advice
would you give a new faculty member who is pursuing his or her first grant? How should
I interact with program officers? Ask whether the faculty member might be willing to let
you see a successful proposal. Finally, ask them whether, in the future, they might be
willing to read a draft of your proposal and give you feedback when you are ready to
submit it for funding.
Keep in mind, however, that agencies and programs can vary significantly in their
cultures and expectations, and that they also change over time. One PI’s experience may
be very different from another’s, and advice that might have been valid for a program
five years ago might no longer apply. For that reason, it’s important to talk to a number
of successful researchers to get a wide range of perspectives.
Be aware, also, that the halls of academia are rife with myths about funding
agencies, the most prolific sources of which are faculty who have been unsuccessful in
winning grants. Most of these nuggets of conventional wisdom concern reasons why
you or faculty from your institution cannot be successful in winning a grant. So when
someone in your department explains that NSF only funds east and west coast
universities, or that NSF reviewers really don’t care about broader impacts, be sure to
consider the source. How well do these people really know the agency? How active are
they in pursuing research funding? The best sources of information about an agency are
researchers who have been successful in winning funding from that agency, and if there
isn’t anyone in your department who fits that description, you’ll need to reach out
beyond your department or institution to find a mentor.
In some agencies, the Program Officer can be one of your most helpful funding
mentors. This is particularly true for the Department of Defense, some of the mission
agencies like USDA and NASA, and many programs within NSF. If you are doing research
of interest to the Program Officer, she can often help steer you to the right solicitation,
ask for an unsolicited proposal, and give you feedback on your ideas. Program Officers
want good quality research proposals that fit the goals of their program, so they are
often motivated to provide guidance to help you prepare a better proposal. The extent
38
to which a Program Officer will help you depends on the culture of the agency, the
personality of the Program Officer, and how busy she or he is, so be sure to solicit advice
from the Program Officer, but be careful not to overburden them with requests. For
example, most Program Officers don’t have time to read your entire proposal draft
before submission, so don’t ask them to do so unless they volunteer to do it. However,
they are often happy to read an executive summary and give you feedback on your
research ideas. Furthermore, NSF Program Officers will often invite you to serve as a
reviewer, which is an invaluable way to learn how to write effective proposals. If your
university has a Research Development Office, the staff in that office can also serve as
excellent funding mentors. Their job is to keep up with the latest developments at
funding agencies, and since they are involved in dozens of proposals each year, they
often have much more experience than single PIs with particular funding programs.
What’s more, if they work across your college or university, they may be able to connect
you with potential collaborators and other faculty experienced in a program or agency
of interest.
Another important role of a research funding mentor is to read your draft proposals
and give you feedback. Undertaking a useful critical review of a proposal takes a
significant amount of time, so recruit mentors to review your proposal early and give
them sufficient notice when the draft will be ready. It’s often a good idea to approach a
potential reader at least six weeks before your draft will be ready and ask whether they
would be willing to review your draft, giving them the date when you expect to have it
ready. When the draft is ready, give them several days to go through it. Line up several
readers so that you’ll get more than one opinion. Remember that all proposals can be
improved, and the best mentors are demanding readers who will read your proposal
draft closely and return it with numerous comments, suggestions, and critiques. If a
reviewer returns your proposal draft with a few generally positive comments and no
significant critiques, it’s safe to assume that they didn’t read it carefully.
Finally, after you identify particular agencies and programs likely to fund your
research, work to connect with the community of researchers funded by that agency.
Talk to colleagues at conferences and ask where they have been funded. Look for faculty
at your institution or in your field who have served as Program Officers at the agency.
Connect with researchers in your area who regularly serve as reviewers for the agency
and program. Don’t discount the value of gossip. When you see these people at faculty
meetings or conferences, ask them about any developments at the agency. Often, there
will be buzz among the community about a solicitation that is expected but hasn’t come
out yet, a workshop that’s being planned in preparation for a new area to be funded, or
news about a new Program Officer. Networking with the community of funded
researchers can also be a good way to find collaborators for future proposals.

39
Early-career researchers can be intimidated by the prospect of competing for funding
with more senior researchers with long track records and extensive lists of publications.
You may feel that you’re facing the classic chicken-and-egg conundrum: how can you
get funding without a track record, and how can you build a track record without
funding? One way to get your foot in the funding door is to collaborate with a more
established researcher as a co-PI on a grant. This approach can allow you to
demonstrate your ability to conduct research, generate publications, and get to know
program directors at the funding agency.
There are also a number of other good reasons to collaborate. Your project may call
for knowledge, skills, or resources that you don’t have – an increasingly common
occurrence as research becomes more multidisciplinary. You may be invited to
participate in a large, multi-PI proposal such as a center-level grant. Or the project may
require the participation of more than one type of institution (for example, some
programs encourage or require collaboration with industry, international universities, or
minority serving institutions).
When considering a collaboration, first find out the current policy in your
department for assigning credit for jointly-funded projects and joint publications. In
most departments, promotion and tenure policies have been updated to avoid
punishing researchers for collaborating, but that is not always the case. Also, find out
the procedures for collaborating with researchers outside your department, college, or
institution, if applicable. There can sometimes be issues related to how the indirect cost
(the “overhead”) is shared among multiple departments or colleges, so it’s best to bring
this up with your Department Head or Chair early so that those issues can be resolved
before your proposal is ready to submit.
Structuring the Project
When structuring the project, select an identifiable part of the work that will be your
contribution. To avoid the appearance that you’re merely serving as an assistant to a
more senior researcher, take responsibility for specific tasks, and identify the expertise
that you bring to the project. This will allow you to develop a track record that is clearly
your own and is generally best accomplished by collaborating with another researcher
(or team of researchers) with different, highly distinguishable areas of expertise. The
products of the collaboration (articles, a book, book chapters) should also be discussed
during the planning stages, along with how the writing will be done and credited.
Discuss distribution of the budget explicitly and in detail early in the project planning
process. The most common budgeting mistake made in multi-PI projects is to simply
divide the budget by the number of investigators. Budgets should be apportioned
based on who is responsible for what tasks and the resources required to complete
each of those tasks. If a project is a collaboration between an experimentalist (who
needs to buy materials and supplies, pay for equipment time, and support two students
40
to fabricate and test specimens) and a modeler (who will support one student to
conduct computer modeling), dividing the project budget in half will raise red flags for
the reviewers and leave the experimentalist with insufficient resources to accomplish
her part of the project.
It’s almost always the case that, when the budget numbers are calculated based on
the resources needed to accomplish the proposed research plan, the budget will be very
tight. As the junior member in a collaborative project, you need to make sure that you’ll
have sufficient resources to conduct your portion of the research project. If it appears
you won’t have enough funds, work with your collaborator to modify the research plan
to make it more realistic. Not only will this make it easier for you to perform the
research successfully if you win the grant but it will make your proposal more
competitive, since reviewers usually notice when a research plan is unrealistic based on
the budget, and they’ll hesitate to fund such a project.
MSI and PUI Faculty
If you are faculty at a minority serving institution (an HBCU or HSI) or Predominantly
Undergraduate Institution, you may find that you’re often invited to collaborate on
multi-institutional proposals, particularly proposals to NSF, where diversity is an
important review criterion. These collaborative projects can be wonderful opportunities,
but it’s especially important in these situations that you act as a strong advocate for
your own interests. While PIs at larger institutions may have the best intentions, they
often plan the collaboration from the point of view of their own needs and may not
consider how the collaboration will help you build your research program. A PI may
initially intend to structure the collaboration so that your role is simply to provide access
to minority students who will be recruited to the lead university’s graduate program.
While this kind of activity may provide some benefits to the small number of students
who are recruited, it will do little to help your institution or help you build your research
program. Fortunately, PIs are usually very open to suggestions on how to enhance the
collaboration and thereby improve the proposal.
In your discussions with the PI, let them know your research interests and
capabilities, and work with them to determine what research tasks you and your
students could take on. If you have a large teaching load and are dependent on
undergraduates as research assistants, you may not be able to take on a big part of the
project, but it’s often feasible to carve out a subproject from the research that’s
appropriately scoped for the time and resources you have available. If you don’t have all
the needed instrumentation, or don’t have expertise in a required methodology,
perhaps the project could include funds for you and a student to work in the lab of the
PI for a few weeks in the summer (NSF has supplementary funding available for this). As
we mentioned above, be sure to discuss what the predicted outputs of the project will
be in terms of publications, and structure your part of the project so that you’ll be able
to co-author one or more publications from the research. Let the PI know that you want
to be a full-fledged member of the research team, and include travel funds in your

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budget so that you can attend project team meetings and perhaps present your results
at a conference.
What’s more, by structuring the collaboration so that it benefits your research, has
lasting impact on your institution, and provides high quality research experiences for
your students, you’ll also be helping to make the proposal more competitive. And you
will develop lasting relationships with researchers at the partner institution that can
lead to future proposals, perhaps with you as the PI.

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When you first consider applying to a particular funding opportunity, you’ll need to ask
yourself, “Do I have enough time to produce a well-written proposal before the
deadline?” If you don’t realistically have time to produce a good proposal this semester,
then it’s better either to plan to apply late or to rearrange your commitments to make
time. Producing a hastily-written proposal in all-night sessions the week the proposal is
due will cost you precious sleep, waste time you could have spent on your other
commitments, irritate proposal administrators at your institution who need time to
prepare budgets and get appropriate signatures, and irritate reviewers who have to
read a poorly-written proposal. Producing a good proposal takes time; understanding
that will help you avoid frustration, disappointment, and strained relationships with
your administrators.
How much time does it take to prepare a proposal? Of course, this varies depending
on the type of program, the complexity of the proposal, whether it’s a single-PI or a
team-based project, and so on. However, you can estimate the time you’ll need by
listing the required steps for preparing a proposal along with the approximate time
needed for each task. Below is a generic list that can serve as a starting point, but you’ll
need to add any additional tasks that might be required for your particular proposal.
 Do your homework. Read the solicitation or program description very carefully.
Look at projects that have previously been funded through the program. Contact
the Program Officer to discuss whether your project idea fits this particular
program. Make sure you’re up-to-date on the literature in the topic.
 Assess whether you’re in a position to be competitive for this particular
funding opportunity. Do you have enough publications in the area? Do you have
preliminary data, if they are needed? Do you have the resources you need (e.g.,
access to required instrumentation)?
 Recruit partners and collaborators, if needed. If this will be a multi-investigator
proposal, be sure to meet early and often with your co-investigators to plan a
well-integrated project. This is best done in person or by teleconference, not by
email. If you’ll need letters of collaboration, start working on those early.
 If cost share is required, start working on lining up your cost share as soon as
possible. The process for providing cost share varies by institution, but usually
involves securing commitments from administrators at the departmental,
college, and university levels. This takes time (and, often, multiple memos and
meetings), so start on this as soon as you know you’ll be submitting the
proposal.
 Line up mentors who agree to read your draft proposal and give you feedback.
It’ll be easier to recruit colleagues to read your proposal if you ask them well in
advance. Recruit mentors in your subfield and some who are outside your
subfield.
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 If the proposal will involve investigators from other departments or
institutions, let your Department Head or Chair know. This will avoid any
surprises when the time comes for your Department Head to approve
submission of the proposal.
 Contact your Office of Sponsored Projects or preaward services office to let
them know you’ll be working on a proposal. If you’re submitting to NSF, they’ll
need to get you registered on Fastlane. They’ll also let you know your
institution’s procedures for routing and approval and when you need to have the
final draft of the proposal to them for final check and submittal.
 Scope out your project and start working on the budget. Work with your Office
of Sponsored Projects or preaward services office to start developing a budget. If
this is a single-PI proposal, the budget will probably be fairly straightforward, but
if this is a multi-investigator proposal, be sure to go over the budget with your
coPIs, and count on multiple iterations of the budget.
 Write multiple drafts of your project narrative. This step is usually the most
time intensive. Writing a project narrative that’s clear, compelling, thorough, and
observes the page limits will require multiple drafts. Allow several days between
drafts to permit feedback from your mentors who have agreed to read your
drafts. Set aside several weeks to get this done.
 Develop other required material. Funders typically require a biosketch for each
researcher, information on other pending proposals and funded projects, a
budget narrative, an executive summary, and a number of other ancillary
materials. Make a checklist of everything required for the proposal and work on
these in parallel with your project narrative.
 Finalize your budget and route the proposal and budget for approval. Some
universities require only a project summary along with the finalized budget for
routing, while others want a draft of the project narrative or even the final draft
of the entire proposal. Contact your Sponsored Projects or Preaward Office to
learn your institution’s procedures and be sure to have the documents ready in
time for routing.
 Upload and final check of the entire proposal. Plan to have your entire proposal
uploaded (either by your Sponsored Projects or Preaward Office, or by you) and
ready for final check at least two days before the due date (some offices require
three to five days). This will give you time to address last-minute issues that can
come up, such as problems with uploading, errors due to faulty conversion to
pdf format, or the realization that you’ve forgotten a required form (such as the
Postdoc Mentoring plan required by NSF).
 Submit your proposal. After you give them the go-ahead, your institution’s
authorized representative (usually someone in your Sponsored Projects or
Preaward Office) will submit your proposal. Plan to submit at least one day
before the due date. Since most proposals are now submitted over the internet,
there’s always the possibility that your internet connection will go down on the

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 due date or that the website used for submission will become overwhelmed due
to a large number of submissions. By planning to submit a little early, you’ll
ensure that your proposal will receive the funders full consideration.

Schedule your proposal development effort by starting with the above list of tasks,
adding any additional tasks that pertain to your proposal, and working back from the
due date. For a first proposal, it’s generally advisable to begin at least three months
before the due date. Also be sure to schedule time to work on your proposal; without
setting time aside to complete the preparation, it may be written in a rush or not at all.
Allot several hours each week to work on your proposal without interruptions (with
more time allotted as you get closer to the due date). If you’ll be submitting as part of a
team, also plan at least weekly meetings with your team.
Producing a proposal is a time-consuming effort. As a new faculty member, you’ll
need to be strategic in selecting the grants to pursue and deciding when to pursue
them. But developing a grant proposal can also be very rewarding; it can help you clarify
your research plans, develop new collaborations, and even obtain funding to support
your research.

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The required components for research proposals vary considerably depending on the
funder and the program. Be sure to check the specific requirements of the particular
grant program for which you’re applying. Many agencies provide a set of overall
guidelines (e.g., the Grant Proposal Guide for NSF and the SF-424 for NIH), which may be
modified or supplemented by the particular solicitation. Also be sure to check page
limits (listed here for NIH) and formatting requirements. A list of typical components is
given below (different funders use different names for these components).

Component
Project Summary/Executive
Summary/Abstract
Proposal Narrative/Project
Description/Research Plan
References Cited/
Bibliography
Facilities and Equipment
Budget
Budget Narrative/Justification A description of each item in the budget and why it is needed
Biographical Sketch
Other Materials
Various forms and assurances These include the cover page and other online forms that your
Description
Typically 1 or 2 page summary of the project. Sometimes
specific content is required (e.g., intellectual merit, broader
impacts for NSF; type of project or list of institutions for some
programs)
This is the “meat” of your proposal, where you describe what
you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it. Some
solicitations specify how to structure this component, and some
leave it up to you. Typical sections may include:
 Introduction/Overview/Objectives/Rationale/Specific
Aims/Significance
 Background/Lit Review/State of the Art; Preliminary
Results/Studies
 Methodology/Technical Approach/Experimental
Plan/Research Strategy
 Project Schedule/Milestones/Deliverables/Outcomes
 Management Approach
 Education/broader impacts/diversity
References cited in your proposal narrative (this section may or
may not have a page limit – be sure to check).
Reviewers will look to make sure you have the equipment and
infrastructure you need to accomplish the proposed project
Usually a form filled in with the help of your grants office
Usually includes education, professional position, selected
publications. May also include a personal statement.
As specified by the funder; e.g., Statement of Work, Public
Health Relevance Statement, Data Management Plan, Postdoc
Mentoring Plan, Letters of Support, Collaboration or Reference.
grants office will likely fill out for you as well as IRB, human
subjects, vertebrate animals, and other forms that may be
required.
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One key skill to master as you develop a more robust repertoire of research grant
writing expertise is the mastery of the one- or two-page description of your research
objectives and their significance, herein called the project summary. Depending on the
agency and the specific solicitation, this brief statement may also be referred to, or
serve as, a project abstract, executive summary, research vision statement, project
rationale, or as the introduction to the full proposal. In some cases, the agency may
dictate precisely the content, order, and format of the summary, while in other cases,
an agency may leave the form and content fairly open ended and generic. Often the
content, order, and format will be suited to a particular solicitation. Regardless, the
common characteristic is brevity, typically a length of one to two pages. This constraint
requires that the successful summary statement be clear, succinct, and compelling .
Achieving those characteristics requires significant preliminary thought, discussion, and
multiple draft iterations of what will become the final project summary text.
When writing the project summary, keep in mind Mark Twain’s comment in his
correspondence with a friend: “If I had had more time I would have written you a
shorter letter.” This captures what needs to be done in crafting, as opposed to merely
writing, the project summary. This brief overview statement at the front end of the
proposal offers you the best opportunity you will ever have to capture the interest of
the reviewers early on as they decide whether or not to fund your project. It is here you
must convince your reviewers to want to read the rest of your proposal—thoughtfully,
carefully, and attentively, with interest and curiosity. If you lose the reviewers here, you
have likely left them without reason or interest to read the next fifteen, or twenty-five,
or more pages of your proposal. Your clarity of language, logic, and argument is critical
in the project summary. You certainly don’t want to write a project summary that puts
reviewers in mind of H. L. Mencken’s comment on an article he reviewed as “an army of
words marching across the page in search of an idea.”

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Put yourself in the place of a reviewer. You’ve been asked to review proposals for a DOE
biofuels program, and you have nine proposals to review before you participate in a
panel. You open the first proposal, and it begins, “Biofuels are critical to the national
goal of achieving energy independence…”. The introduction to the proposal continues
on for several paragraphs, explaining the importance of biofuels and discussing why
biofuels need to be developed. Of course, you’ve been asked to review these proposals
because you’re an expert in biofuels, so none of this information is news to you.
You finish reading that proposal and open the second one. It starts, “Biofuels are an
important component of the US’s future energy policy…”. It goes on to explain why
biofuels are important and why research on biofuels is needed. You open the third
proposal, and guess what? It starts with another discussion of why biofuels are
important – some of these discussions even stretch to a page or more. You wade
through these proposals, and then you get to the sixth proposal, and it starts out, “A
critical problem in making biofuels practical is making step x in the synthesis process
more efficient. Our proposed project will address this problem by using the following
innovative approach….”, and it goes on to outline an interesting and innovative
approach to the problem.
Which proposal would you remember?

The First Impression

A common mistake in writing proposals is to spend the first critical paragraphs
explaining to the reviewer something that he surely already knows and probably has
read in all the proposals leading up to yours. The truism that you never get a second
chance to make a first impression holds particularly true when it comes to proposals.
Your reviewer’s interest is at its height when she starts reading your proposal. At that
point, you can either reward her excitement or lull her to sleep. Starting with an
introduction that does nothing to distinguish your project from all the other proposed
projects will lull her to sleep.
To develop an exciting introduction, you need to identify the kernel of your great
idea. How is your idea different from what others will propose? What important
problem will it solve? Why is it innovative and exciting? Don’t bury that kernel at the
bottom of page 3 after you’ve lulled your reviewer into a pleasant stupor with generic
discussions about your topic area. Put it right up front in the first paragraph. When you
finish your first paragraph, it should be absolutely distinctive. If that introductory
paragraph could be put into another proposal on the same topic area, delete it and start
over.
Many PIs like to start their proposal with a description of the need or problem
they’re addressing. This approach is fine, but be sure to pinpoint the specific need or
problem you’ll be addressing (not “biofuels production needs to be made more
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economical,” but “step x in the production of biofuels is inefficient”) and quickly follow
with a discussion of how you’ll address that problem (e.g., “We have an innovative idea
y for increasing efficiency of that step by 40%”).

Providing Context without Boring the Reviewer

It is important to demonstrate to the funder that you understand the significance of the
topic area and the motivation for the program, but it’s not necessary to discuss those
things in the first couple of paragraphs. Save that discussion for your background
section, which should be placed after an introductory section that provides a compelling
overview of your proposed project. This overview should concisely summarize what
you’re going to do, why you’re going to do it, and why it’s significant. When you get to
that background section, be sure to tailor it to your specific project. You’ll not only want
to demonstrate to the funder that you understand the funder’s goals for the program
but at the same time you’ll want to describe how funding your specific project will help
the funder achieve those goals.
When you discuss the state of the art, it similarly can be tempting (particularly if
you’ve been teaching a course on the subject) to write a long section that is essentially
an introductory lecture about the topic. Unless you have good reason to believe that
the reviewers are not well versed in the subject of your proposal, it’s best to avoid this
temptation and instead focus quickly on the specific problem or challenge within the
topic that is the focus of your proposed project. What have others done to try to
address this problem? What holes in current knowledge must be filled in order to solve
this problem?
So, taking our earlier biofuels example, that would mean discussing the state of
knowledge about the specific synthesis step that you plan to improve, not providing a
long description of the state of the art in biofuels. If your state of the art section could
be interchanged with that from any other proposal on the topic, then you can be
assured that the reviewer will be asleep by the time he finishes reading the section.
Even more concerning, he will have gained no insight into the motivation behind your
particular proposal, as compared to all the other proposals he has been reading.
Remember that your proposal will be evaluated along with a pile of other proposals
submitted in response to the same funding opportunity. Whatever you can do to make
your proposal stand out as more original, more thoughtful, more significant, or more
exciting than the others will increase your chances of funding, and that starts with a
strong introduction.

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The fundamental requirement of the proposal narrative at the time of submittal is that
it be a well-written document that responds fully, clearly, and persuasively to the
research goals and objectives and review criteria defined by the sponsor in the funding
solicitation, or the agency guidelines in the case of an unsolicited proposal. However,
long before submitting the proposal narrative to a funding agency, you will find that it
plays a key role in the conceptual development of the proposed research.
The proposal narrative development process is akin to a slowly lifting fog, whereby a
continuous process of draft text iterations gradually transforms initially diffuse ideas
into a tightly crafted proposal narrative. Equally important, the evolving proposal
narrative serves as an incubator of ideas, particularly in the early stages of proposal
development, and acts as the structural framework, imposing rigor, clarity, and
simplicity on evolving ideas and concepts and establishing their connectedness to
operational and performance details. The proposal narrative process typically begins
with a significant amount of (pick your adjective) chaos, uncertainty, vagueness,
ambiguity, false starts, and indecision, among many other indeterminacies, concerning
how best to meet the funding agency research objectives. Do not be alarmed by a
certain amount of uncertainty and ambiguity about the shape the final proposal will
take. This is fairly common at the beginning of any proposal development effort.
In much the same way as mathematics or a computer program helps impose rigor,
relational clarity, logical sequences, and simplicity on our understanding of the behavior
of the physical world, language plays a similar role in the evolving proposal narrative.
The key point to understand and anticipate is that competitive ideas evolve and
converge over time; they do not appear fully and perfectly formed by a narrative
genie. Most ideas that eventually evolve and mature during the development and
writing of a proposal narrative originate from your first reading of the solicitation.
Sometimes ideas will come from “collaborative brainstorming” discussions with a few
colleagues. In any case, if it is determined that a solicitation matches your research
interests and expertise and that a competitive proposal can be written in the time
available, the path to the end product, a competitive proposal narrative, is often far
from clear at the earliest stages of proposal development. Successful proposals
converge on excellence by going through multiple iterations wherein ideas and the
language used to express them are continuously refined and made clear draft after
draft after draft.
Bringing clarity to the proposal development process typically starts with ideas,
concepts, and directions expressed verbally among researchers related to meeting the
research objectives of the solicitation. Depending on the type of proposal, initial
discussions, or even “brainstorming” ideas initially expressed verbally can range from
slightly to extremely illusory when attempting the first draft. The real challenge occurs
when it comes time to translate ideas expressed verbally into the narrative language
required to make a compelling case for the significance of the research. Verbal
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“understandings” among participants can be both illusory and transitory, and multiple
participants may carry away multiple understandings from research development
meetings. In fact, in the initial stages of drafting the proposal narrative, there are often
many uncertainties and unknowns about the final research plan that will emerge by the
time the final proposal takes shape.
This makes the proposal writing process itself one of iterative exploration
converging on a compelling and competitive research narrative over time, i.e., before
the due date. What seems like a “good idea” at the start of this iterative process can
often disintegrate under closer examination. Verbal epiphanies are deceptive because
they lack connectedness and the appropriate balance and synthesis of ideas with detail
needed for a successful narrative. It is this conjoining of ideas with the performance
details that offers the central challenge to crafting a competitive proposal narrative.
However, this iterative process of translating ideas into the structure imposed by
language in the research narrative serves many important functions—it helps tame the
conceptual excesses and unwarranted effusiveness that may occur among some
members of a research team at the early stages of proposal development; it helps
define the clear boundaries, scale, and scope of the initiative; it sharpens the focus and
tightens the descriptions of concepts and ideas; and it forces connectedness among
ideas, and between the ideas and operational details that transition and transform ideas
to clearly stated research or educational outcomes, or research deliverables.
In effect, the evolving proposal narrative helps transform ideas and anchor them in a
common reality—the research narrative—a reality that must be shared by research
colleagues, program officers, and review panelists if the proposal is to meet with
success. In this regard, a proposal narrative is not unlike a novel or a movie. It creates
its own, self-contained reality. It contains all the information that the funding agency
and review panel will know about your capabilities and your capacity to perform. With a
few exceptions (e.g., site visits), an agency bases its decision to fund or not to fund
entirely on the proposal narrative and the persuasive reality it creates. The
construction of this common reality through a process of writing and rewriting draft
after draft of text helps test ideas in a “language lab” in a way not unlike
experimentalists test ideas about the physical world.
Moreover, this process of defining a common reality and a common language
through multiple draft iterations of the research narrative becomes particularly
important in multidisciplinary efforts and collaborations. These situations require a
common structure to meld multiple disciplinary research strands, or research focus
areas, and to make ideas accessible to collaborators of potentially synergetic but
differing disciplines. One common challenge in multidisciplinary research initiatives is
the sponsor-required vision statement, or similar integrative and synthesizing
statement. The key role of this statement is to unify the research effort and make a
convincing case to the sponsor that critical and beneficial synergies inhere in several
research strands integrated within one research project that would not be possible were
the research strands funded separately as discrete projects to unconnected PIs. The

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crafting of a research vision statement or other unifying statement is as critical to a
proposal’s competiveness as it is challenging to write.

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As one of the most critical components of a successful research narrative, specificity
must be evident throughout project descriptions. Specificity grounds the research
vision and goals in the key performance details unique to your research objectives, and
thereby illuminates the importance of your research for reviewers. Judiciously selected
specifics display the uniqueness of your research narrative and define the particularity
of your research plan. When key research specifics are embedded in, or follow,
overarching statements defining the research vision and project goals, they significantly
enhance the clarity and persuasiveness of the research narrative. Well-chosen specifics
serve as the glue that binds together the more general narrative statements introducing
your research topic to the reviewers. In effect, specifics help transition the narrative
from a “black and white” portrait to a “full color” portrait of your proposed research
(see Writing a Compelling Project Narrative in the February 15, 2012 issue).
However, providing specificity should not be confused with inflating a research
narrative with technical minutiae impenetrable to the typical reviewer. Specifics
should be clear, precise, logically ordered, and, like Goldilocks, supplied in just the right
amount. They should be chosen to illuminate rather than disguise the importance of
your research. Specificity should sharpen rather than blur the focus of the research
narrative, encouraging reviewers to recall the key factors that make your research
feasible, unique, significant, and hence fundable. As in all effective narrative
techniques, balance and proportion are important; therefore, you might think in terms
of “Goldilocks Specifics,” somewhat like the “Goldilocks Planets” that are not so near a
sun, nor so far away, that liquid water does not exist on their surface. In this case, the
successful narrative gives neither too few nor too many specifics but just the right
amount. Make your point, but don’t belabor it, and remember that superlatives are
not specifics. Any attempt to substitute superlatives for specifics will be quickly noted
by reviewers, and likely in an unfavorable way. Specifics function in the narrative text
as mirrors that reflect your capacity to perform.
For example, vision statements and project goals, such as the following from a
Department of Energy funded proposal, define the proposed research landscape in
broad brush strokes: “The goals of the Greater Philadelphia Innovation Cluster (GPIC) for
Energy Efficient Buildings are to improve energy efficiency and operability and reduce
carbon emissions of new and existing buildings, and to stimulate private investment and
quality job creation in the Greater Philadelphia region, the larger Mid Atlantic region,
and beyond. GPIC will focus on full spectrum retrofit of existing average size commercial
and multi-family residential buildings.” Think of the vision and goals statements, such as
this one, as descriptions of some promised “units of change” (e.g., improved energy
efficiency, improved energy operability, reduced carbon emissions, investments
stimulated, and jobs created) that will occur over some “unit of time” that will result in
some “unit of benefit.” Essentially, vision and goals statements promise better things to
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come based on the proposed research. Without specifics, they are empty promises, or,
as some might say, “all hat and no cattle.”
The basic role of specifics in the research narrative is to make your research vision
and goals believable, convincing, and memorable to reviewers. Specifics will convince
reviewers of your capacity to perform, of the reasonableness of your research plan and
objectives, and of the promise that your research will advance the field or the strategic
mission of a funding agency in some important way. By contrast, entire proposals or
sections of proposals defining a major project goal, e.g., energy efficiency, but lacking a
detailed description of the research to be done, the justification for doing it, the manner
of doing it, the people who will do it, and the benefits of doing it, lack specificity.
Generous reviewers of such uninspiring text might first question their own short-term
memory and hold themselves at fault for flagging attention, but one important rule of
grant writing is to always blame the writer and hold the reviewer blameless should the
narrative fail to make a convincing case for funding. If reviewers must repeatedly look
back in your narrative text to find and recall the essential specifics of your proposed
research, then the fault lies in the writing and not the reviewers’ memories.
Why might narrative text lack specificity? It is easier and less time consuming to
make general claims and promises than it is to select a logically-connected series of
specific details that illuminate your research objectives and answer the core questions
listed above. Specifics serve to both test and prove the value of your ideas, and when
they are lacking, it tells a reviewer that your ideas may also be lacking, or have yet to
become fully developed. A proposal is judged in a kind of courtroom: the specifics of
your proposal must answer reviewers’ questions and overcome their skepticism to pave
the way for a positive verdict.
In other cases, narrative text might lack specificity because one or more authors
have mistakenly repeated various versions of the same goals and confused this
repetition with an offering of specifics. Repeating goals in various ways does not
address the core questions reviewers need answered. In this regard, keep in mind
Richard Feynman’s observation: “You can know the name of a bird in all the languages
of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about
the bird. So look at the bird and see what it's doing. I learned very early the difference
between knowing the name of something and knowing something.” In the example
used above, think of a goal as the name of something, in this case, “energy efficient
buildings.” Think of the specifics in your narrative as proof or validation that you know
something about achieving your research goal. In this case, it might be offering
specifics about how building envelopes, smart buildings, sensors, materials, design
practices, energy systems, construction practices, and the like, contribute to achieving
your research goal. Stating a goal without then offering compelling specifics that
make clear the process you will use to transition a goal to reality, i.e., a research
outcome, is the domain of politicians and bumper sticker slogans and not that of the
successful research proposal.

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 Moreover, continuing with the energy efficiency example, specifics need to be
judiciously selected and characterized by the following:
 Relevance to the research goal, e.g., if your energy efficient materials research
focuses on only one of several areas, such as photovoltaics, thermoelectrics,
solid-state lighting, among many others, your task is to offer specifics relevant
only to your proposed research and not offer specifics relevant to the entire
universe of energy-efficient materials;
 Appropriateness of scale, e.g., if the crystal structure of a material is not key to
understanding the research, then don’t belabor the Miller Index; similarly, if only
the duration of an event is key to your research, then there is no need to belabor
the cesium oscillator or explain the history of NIST;
 Priority for accomplishing research goal, e.g., offer the key specifics first that
make your case most clearly and briefly and in a way most memorable to
reviewers, but don’t offer an exhaustive list of specifics that overwhelms
reviewers, thereby leaving it to reviewers to determine the most important
details needed to convince them of your capacity to achieve your research goals.

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To craft a competitive proposal narrative requires that a research project description
address the vision, goals, objectives, rationale, and specific outcomes of your proposed
research. Depending on the specific solicitation, this requirement may be explicit or
implicit, but either way, the care with which you address these factors will determine
whether or not you persuade reviewers to recommend funding for your proposal.
While the definition of these terms may differ somewhat by disciplinary domain, or by
funding agency, it is helpful in research grant writing to define these terms in ways that
best reflect what might be considered the generic narrative structure of most research
proposals. Some funding agencies are very prescriptive in defining a narrative structure,
such as the U.S. Department of Education, whereas other agencies, such as the National
Science Foundation, allow the author greater flexibility in choosing a narrative structure.
Of course, when a specific agency or solicitation prescribes a required format for a
research narrative, then that format must be followed exactly as the sponsor presents
it. However, in cases where the agency or the solicitation leaves the research
narrative structure open or even undefined, then it is helpful to have in mind your own
conceptual framework for best presenting your ideas to program officers and
reviewers. Moreover, it is common in the case of unsolicited or investigator-initiated
proposals for only a very general narrative framework to be defined by the agency, or by
program officers. Finally, the five generic elements of a competitive proposal discussed
herein are scalable, from large center proposals to small research grants and to white
papers and concept papers that may initiate an invitation to submit an unsolicited
proposal.
Regardless of where any particular agency or solicitation falls on this spectrum, the
generic underpinnings of a successful research grant include a sequence of five key
persuasive elements: the research vision, goals, objectives, rationale, and specific
outcomes. Depending on the solicitation, these elements may or may not appear in the
order described here , but they typically provide the critical mass of the persuasive
argument in successful proposals. They also provide clarity through a logically tiered
framework that allows reviewers to differentiate your research at multiple levels of
specificity and detail, from the macrovision to microperformance details.
Unless defined otherwise in the solicitation, these terms may be self-defined for the
purposes of a specific grant, since your goal is to define them in ways that assist the
reviewers to more clearly and convincingly understand the value of the proposed
research in a logical, stepwise fashion. This understanding should include an
overarching vision illuminated by increasingly detailed or finely grained narrative text
that validates in detail your capacity to achieve the research vision. Of course, the goal
here, as in all strategies to write a more competitive and hence fundable grant, is to
make the research narrative more clear, accessible, and memorable to reviewers in a
positive way. Unfortunately, as experienced reviewers will tell you, there are also many
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ways to make your proposal memorable to reviewers in a negative way (for example,
by not following directions, or by preparing a vague or poorly organized proposal).
These five elements provide a series of sequential waypoints or critical touchstones
that, in the aggregate, validate the merit of your research, much like the original
touchstone was used as an assaying tool in ancient Greece to determine precious metals
and compare unknown samples to those of known purity. Addressing these five key
elements in your project description will enable reviewers to “assay” the value of your
proposed research compared to that of your competitors. In essence, they form the
critical building blocks of a compelling research narrative by giving reviewers the
structure, order, detail, scale, and perspective needed to easily judge the value of your
research.
In all cases, come to your own working definition of these terms in a way that
clearly will help the reviewers understand your research. Think of these terms as
differentiating tools bringing clarity to your research narrative. Don’t worry so much
about how others define these terms, but instead adopt and adapt them to suit your
own purposes. We address below some possible ways to think about these terms with
the overall intent of using the key distinctions they provide to improve the quality and
hence competitiveness of your project description.
A vision statement typically provides the global, unifying, thematic overview of the
research to be accomplished over the proposed funding period and its significance and
value-added benefits to the funding agency mission, or to the research field itself. For
example, the vision statement might address some significant transformation that will
occur over the grant period at a particular scale most relevant to your research focus.
This might range from large-scale transformations made possible by center-level
research funding, or a transformation on a small scale related to a very narrowly
focused research question. Regardless, being able to describe your research in an
integrative way within the defined research boundaries described in the specific agency
solicitation is an important first step in the sequence of steps you must take to construct
a clear and compelling project narrative.
A research vision will typically be better understood by defining one or more
research goals to be achieved over the term of the award. The research goals are more
specific than the research vision and serve as the major organizing framework for
achieving that vision. Goals are defined both in terms of representing one or more
research milestones or major accomplishments and in demonstrating how the goals
intersect over the performance period. For example, a research center proposal will
present an overarching research vision to be achieved by specific research goals that,
when integrated over the performance period of the grant, allow research synergy to be
achieved in some way. Institutional transformation proposals, e.g., NSF ADVANCE,
IGERT, CREST, among others, all define a vision and then list programmatic goals that,
when achieved, make the vision possible. Smaller grants may have only one or two
goals. It is also important, given the emphasis on performance metrics and evaluation
at federal agencies, that you define your goals in ways that render them easily
evaluated, both by reviewers and, on larger proposals, by a sponsor’s annual
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performance review. Don’t confuse goals with nebulous wishes. Goals need sufficient
clarity and specificity to permit reviewers to evaluate them for their potential impact on
the agency’s mission, or for advancing the research field in some way, or for
accomplishing the broader goals and objectives defined specific to the solicitation.
Once the research goals have been defined, clearly state the key research
objectives. Unfortunately, the definition of goals versus objectives can cause
organizational confusion in the writing of a project narrative, most often when these
terms are used interchangeably. This discussion of the distinction between goals and
objectives can sometimes turn into the equivalent of the arguments posed by medieval
theologians asking how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. It is always best
not to go down these rabbit holes and simply self-define the terms consistently and in
ways that best suit your narrative needs. For research grant writing, if the terms are not
defined in the solicitation, the key is to produce a clear, compelling, and easily
understood project narrative for reviewers. In this instance, defining goals as the
overarching, longer-term outcomes, milestones, or accomplishments of the research,
and defining research objectives as the critical operational subsets used to achieve each
goal works well as an organizational framework for the narrative and allows the
reviewers to quickly grasp the significance of the research at various scales. For
example, research objectives in aggregate define a key research goal; research goals in
aggregate define a research vision. The intent here is to provide reviewers clarity. The
foundation of clarity is defining an organizational framework for the research
narrative that allows distinctions to be easily made and in a logical sequence. The
increasingly finely-grained sequence of vision, goals, and research objectives offers one
such narrative pattern that can be used to make a proposal more easily accessible and
memorable to reviewers.
Moreover, reviewers must understand the rationale motivating your research, for
example, why your research idea is a good one; why your research is important and
significant, why your research approach will be productive; why your research expertise
makes you uniquely qualified to advance the proposed research; why your institutional
research infrastructure (equipment, instrumentation, support, resources) will enable
your research; and why your research plan is appropriate, effective, and efficient.
Finally, while your research goals address overarching milestones, accomplishments,
or outcomes, reviewers will also appreciate a more finely-grained understanding of the
specific outcomes of your research in a way that encourages them to clearly understand
the value of funding your research. In this regard, it is important to define specific
research outcomes in a way that invites a rigorous evaluation of your research
performance over the term of the grant or for annual performance reviews on larger
grants. Given the emphasis on research metrics at federal agencies, defining and
integrating key performance metrics into the research could positively influence your
proposal’s competitiveness. In some cases, particularly at the research center level or
for institutional and educational transformation grants, among others, an external
evaluator may be required. So it is important that the narrative discussion of specific
outcomes be made clear to reviewers.
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 The foregoing steps are not meant to be cast in stone, but to offer a starting point
for a framework for organizing the research narrative that will enhance your chances of
success.

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 ’
Learning how to develop and write successful proposals begins with gaining an
understanding of some of the key generic strategies that enhance the competitiveness
of proposals regardless of discipline or agency. These core generic strategies form the
necessary foundation for presenting your research idea most effectively to program
officers and review panelists. The counterpart to understanding successful strategies
amounts to understanding unsuccessful “strategies,” or unsuccessful practices that
diminish the competitiveness of your proposal by obscuring your research idea in a
patchwork research narrative .
In fact, a list of common mistakes, or common misconceptions, made in the
development and writing of proposals can be of enormous value to new and junior
faculty beginning a research career, as well as to more experienced investigators
seeking to continuously improve the success rate of their proposals in a difficult funding
climate. This critical information often comes from a senior faculty mentor with a
history of successful funding, or it can come from research development and grant
writing professionals who have benefitted from working with highly successful
researchers on successful proposals of all sizes, especially center-level proposals in
which many component parts comprise the center narrative.
The most successful faculty researchers tend to be those whose success in funding
begins with smaller grants of a few PIs and grows over time to research centers or other
large grants. These researchers can develop a capacity to frame the development and
writing of the proposal by thinking strategically about every part of the proposal
narrative, from the overarching vision statement to the smallest details that illuminate
the research team’s capacity to perform.
New and junior faculty can learn from successful researchers that successful
proposals represent new and exciting ideas originating from the PI and the PI’s research
team, or, as NSF and NIH might characterize the research, it must be “transformative”
research. This requires that the research narrative be as close to perfect as possible—
perfect in its vision, perfect in the operational details that advance the vision, perfect in
its synthesis and integration of all component parts with the overall goals and
objectives, and perfect in every section and subsection required to respond fully to the
solicitation.
Therefore, it is important not to be tempted to use spare parts from older proposals
(successful or unsuccessful), or information archived in database files, or narrative text
created as so-called boilerplate by known or unknown authors. While writing a
successful proposal narrative that advances new ideas in a compelling way is hard work,
it cannot be made easier by the use of off-the-shelf text or boilerplate text written by
others. On the contrary, it can be significantly harmed by that practice.
In specific terms, the use of boilerplate imposes a distorting structure on the
proposal narrative that should evolve logically, consistently, proportionally, and
integratively from a core research idea. This consistency should apply to the ideas
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advanced by the principal author as well as the language patterns and structure used by
the author to describe those ideas. Unfortunately, no antirejection drugs exist to
ameliorate the harm done by attempting to transplant boilerplate text into a proposal in
hopes of making it more successful. In the successfully crafted proposal narrative, ideas
and language interweave to create a coherent and seamless synthesis. Boilerplate or
recycled text will destroy the needed symmetry at all scales.
What else is not a successful proposal? Edited collections of many short articles, or
sections written by an army of authors, some known and, in the case of boilerplate,
some unknown, lacking a coordinated evolution of the research ideas, will not meet
with success. Unfortunately, however, once a proposal narrative has been built in a way
that reveals gaps between sections, parts, or topics, renovating that inchoate narrative
will require significant time and energy. If a researcher also introduces boilerplate into
the proposal narrative, either verbatim or modified, she will push the narrative
structure further in the direction of a crazy quilt of ideas rather than a seamless
integration of text and ideas. In many ways, the use of boilerplate text is akin to
distributing a few counterfeit bills among the legal currency you use for cash purchases.
At its worst, boilerplate text may come near to flirting with unintentional plagiarism,
depending on the source of the text, and it is certainly not something federal research
agencies would expect in a proposal that presents itself as a persuasive argument for
the significance and merit of the proposed new research.
Having understood the disadvantages of boilerplate text, it’s worth taking a moment
to ensure that we all understand what this term means. Most successful PI’s don’t use
this term (or the text itself), but inexperienced and eager researchers may use it. While
various professions may use the term to refer to various types of text, in most cases it
refers to inferior, off-the-shelf writing, often of unknown and dubious origin, that
operates as a static, plug-in set of phrases, sentences, paragraphs, or conceptual
outlines. By definition, boilerplate fails to change or to reflect the evolving set of ideas
associated with the successful proposal.
Boilerplate is frozen in time, whereas the successful research proposal originates
with a good idea that evolves during the development and writing of the proposal
narrative to make an original and compelling case for funding. Moreover, even the
most excellent writing has a very short shelf life, perhaps a matter of months. In fact,
most often by the startup period of a grant, perhaps six to twelve months after the
submission of the proposal, the successful narrative is typically dated and showing signs
of age. If you are maturing research and educational ideas, then the ideas you have six
months from now should be more robust and better explicated than the ones you have
now. Do not encumber your good ideas with spare parts developed by someone else
with absolutely no knowledge of why your ideas are significant and how best to
configure those ideas within an integrated proposal narrative.
When the term “boilerplate” in used by those who develop and write proposals--
typically within private sector consulting firms (engineering, architectural, scientific,
etc.)-- then it typically refers to a description of past performances on similar projects in
a capabilities section of the proposal. This recycled language is used to bolster the case
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that a contract awarded to the applicant would once again result in successful
deliverables of one kind or another. However, when the term begins to migrate from
contract work into proposals describing exploratory and transformational research to
federal agencies, it has crossed the boundary from an appropriate to an inappropriate
use of the term.
While faculty should avoid boilerplate, they can become knowledgeable about
successful models for some of the common sections required in a proposal, particularly
in larger proposals, such as those related to institutional infrastructures, access to
equipment, instrumentation and facilities, plans for undergraduate research or post-doc
mentoring, management plans, diversity plans, data management plans, and the like.
Descriptions of these resources may be adapted judiciously to inform possible topic
points but not as transplanted text that disturbs the context of the proposal narrative.
Moreover, research development professionals can make this information much more
robust by working with successful PIs during the start-up period of grants where the
concepts defined in the proposal may be significantly modified to work more effectively
in actual operation. This represents one place where the use of boilerplate, for example
related to NSF’s “broader impacts” requirement, can do a real disservice to the PI.
Boilerplate is like the minispare tires that come with new cars: it is not intended for use
on your extended research journey.
Bottom line: if you are proposing new research ideas, express the significance of
those new ideas, and all topic components of them, in newly-crafted writing for every
word of the proposal narrative. Success in proposal writing will not be achieved using
after-market parts. Successful proposals are not renovations of the past but a creation
for the future and the compelling arguments you make for the place and significance
of your research ideas in that future.

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Given the increase in federal agency funding for projects of all sizes that are
multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, or, to use NSF’s term, transdisciplinary in nature, new
faculty need to explore the development of institutional affinity groups, collaborations,
and partnerships across university colleges, departments, and disciplines, as well as
consider potential multi-institutional initiatives at the regional or national level. Often
the start of this process may begin with exploratory meetings to identify, define, and
characterize the potential scope, vision, uniqueness, possible team configurations, and
funding potential from federal agencies that matches the research interests of a faculty
affinity group, or possible subgroups.
Research affinity groups often function as a precursor to research partnerships and
collaborations. Research partnerships and collaborations often have their origins in the
pursuit of a specific open solicitation or anticipated solicitation on an annual grant cycle.
By contrast, research affinity groups tend towards a more open-ended timeline that
permits them to consider an array of possible funding opportunities across several
agencies under an overarching research theme such as sustainability or health
disparities.
This process of developing and configuring exploratory affinity groups can often
challenge new and more junior faculty, nor does it always appear easy or obvious to
more senior faculty. Often the research opportunities driving the need for affinity
groups have very broad, overarching themes, such as sustainability, health disparities,
climate, water, and energy, among many others. NSF often emerges as a major funder
in many of these overarching research areas, e.g., through cross-cutting programs, but
these global research themes can also receive significant funding from many of the
federal mission agencies as well, and sometimes in partnership with each other.
The NSF program Research Coordination Networks, for example, offers funding not
to conduct research but to advance a field or create new directions in research or
education by developing a network of researchers. It supports groups of investigators
(aka, affinity groups, partnerships, or collaborations) to communicate and coordinate
their research, training, and educational activities across disciplinary, organizational,
geographic, societal, and international boundaries. This interesting program promises
over time to fund various model configurations of research partnerships and networks
across disciplinary and institutional domains. These funded models will prove adaptable
and adoptable as generic examples for faculty affinity groups of all sorts.
Given these emerging developments, the need to establish research affinity groups
is not new but increasingly common as federal research agencies address the so-called
grand research challenges of all sorts, e.g., the 14 grand challenges of the 21st Century
presented by the National Academies. While the processes and protocols for forming
research affinity groups may already be fairly common across many disciplines, the
disciplinary boundaries are being dramatically expanded by federal agency funding that
recognizes the importance of such affinity groups to solving complex scientific
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challenges, particularly those with societal dimensions. An affinity group can be started
and led by an experienced principal investigator working with a few colleagues and a
shared vision, or, increasingly, it can be initiated by a group of new and more junior
faculty who find intense intellectual excitement in transdisciplinary research.
Regardless how it begins, the group then evolves as an affinity group, with a better
defined research vision and more fully developed goals, objectives, and operational
details to achieve the vision than would have been possible had they worked in
disciplinary isolation.
The core of the research vision will be grounded in disciplines well supported at
specific agencies of interest, often engineering and the sciences. But the affinity group
for such overarching research themes as those listed above must also include disciplines
that complement the core research in such areas as education, societal benefits and
impacts, public policy, and economics. In addition, researchers from the social and
behavioral sciences or humanities would give significant value-added benefits to the
core research by articulating its uses and benefits in terms of societal impacts. In many
cases, the absence of these complementary disciplines will disqualify the proposal for
funding. For example, NSF made this clear in the Water Sustainability and Climate
solicitation, stating: “Successful proposals are expected to study water systems in their
entirety and to enable a new interdisciplinary paradigm in water research. Proposals
that do not broadly integrate across the biological sciences, geosciences, engineering,
and social sciences may be returned without review.”
As a result of this dramatic increase in the number of research funding opportunities
appearing under the umbrella of overarching research themes or grand challenges, new
and more junior faculty not only have to master the craft of writing successful research
proposals but also develop the leadership skills to form, develop, and move forward a
research affinity group in a way that enhances the opportunities for funding success of
all the members. Over the past two decades, this skill set has most often resided with
senior faculty who successfully competed for research centers funded by NSF (see
Profiles in Team Science), NIH, DoD, DHS, and NASA, among other agencies. However,
many new and junior faculty may have no connection with senior faculty who
successfully secured major center or center-level funding in research areas that required
a transdisciplinary partnership approach.
On many campuses, the experience and expertise in the processes and protocols of
establishing successful research affinity groups may also reside in research development
and grant writing offices, typically at the university or college level, with a track record
of assisting faculty on specific projects requiring the formation of research partnerships
and collaborations. Regardless where that expertise resides, it is important that new
and junior faculty benefit from it, either by linking successfully to senior faculty as
mentors, or by seeking support of research office professionals experienced at working
with faculty on developing affinity groups and the proposals resulting from such groups.
With this in mind, the first objective of a research affinity group is to define an
overarching research vision or goal, e.g., sustainability of regional coastal ecosystems,
that maps inclusively to group members and concurrently maps to one or more federal
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agency research funding areas, or agency mission areas. Depending on group dynamics
and leadership, participation in exploratory meetings of potential research affinity
groups requires at least a moderate tolerance of chaos, disorder, false starts, and
confusion, preferably made more tolerable by an experience-based faith that good ideas
can come out of what initially appears to be disorder. These early meetings are no place
for biblical literalists or constitutional strict constructionists, or those with a preset idea
about how an exploratory meeting should progress.
One caveat in this regard is to be both cautious and suspicious of those who offer
what might be called “pedagogies of partnerships” or “canned protocols” for developing
research partnerships often disconnected from the research culture as well as
disconnected experientially from the hard work of having actually developed a
successful research partnership in the past. When it comes to developing research
affinity groups or partnerships, keep in mind the old adage that “experience is the best
teacher.” For new faculty, it may be helpful to find an experienced faculty mentor
whose past funding success makes her an excellent guide into what may seem like a
daunting task at first—forming a successful affinity group or partnership.
Senior faculty or research development offices can assist in this process in several
ways. Perhaps most importantly, they can bring an institutional memory to the meeting
of models, processes, and protocols that work and those that may not. This helps to
ensure that the research affinity group does not reinvent the wheel, or, worse, reinvent
the flat tire, as one NSF program officer observed. It is not uncommon for the initial
meeting of an exploratory research affinity group to be an all-day affair, or even a
weekend retreat. During this meeting, many opportunities will arise to offer
observations that subtly redirect some of the more exuberant ideas disconnected from
an agency mission or programmatic area of support. While the meeting will likely be
called to develop a common research vision or goal as its overarching purpose, it still
must be guided by information about possible funding scenarios that can breathe life
into the group if it is to sustain itself over the long term.
One way to do this is by a judicious reverse engineering of potential funding
opportunities. This would not be expressed in the openly self-serving fashion of Willie
Sutton who, when asked why he robbed banks, replied “because that is where the
money is.” But there is, nonetheless, a bargain to be made that balances the research
interests of the group members with the availability of funding. Including someone
informed about funding opportunities across some of the key research agencies,
particularly NSF, can help this process immensely. Such a group member can ensure
that ideas and action plans for implementing them are informed in a general way by
funding prospects, particularly the prospects for these overarching research themes
with opportunities across agencies. Unfortunately, the “Field of Dreams” analogy does
not work for the development of research affinity groups—if you build it they (funders)
may not come, especially if the group vision is established and framed in a way that
does not resonate with one or more of a funding agency’s mission or research priorities.
Newly forming research affinity groups also need to hear advice about what is and
what is not a competitive proposal. Participants must be reminded that research
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agencies do not fund ideas, no matter how good, that do not align with the mission
objectives of the agency. Some members of a newly formed research affinity group may
be overly ambitious, or inexperienced in grant writing to the point that they confuse a
research grant to NSF or another federal agency with applying for a MacArthur
Foundation Fellowship, or so called “genius grant.” Excitement and exuberance must be
tempered by a realistic assessment of a group’s capacities and the corresponding
opportunities for funding. There are benefits to research affinity groups that sustain
themselves on ideas alone, without external funding, but in most cases, various
academic demands, particularly promotion and tenure for new faculty, will force a more
realistic and grounded expectation of anticipated outcomes, i.e., funding. As Samuel
Johnson observed, “nothing so focuses the mind as the prospect of being hung.”
Support for research affinity groups can be significantly enhanced by offering the
appropriate information at the appropriate time with regard to contextualizing the
group’s research ideas to the mission, culture, and strategic plans of federal funding
agencies, or programmatic areas within agencies. Some members of newly formed
research affinity groups may not have more than a very cursory, at best, understanding
of the research priorities of various federal agencies, and it is not uncommon that
opinions of what will and will not fit the research mission are not grounded on any
understanding of the mission and culture of the agency, or appreciation for what has
been funded by the agency, or, more importantly, what characterizes successful
principal investigators at the agency.
In some cases, research affinity groups may have ambitious expectations that the
group will compete successfully for major awards or funding at the center level. Here, it
is helpful to discuss a range of potential funding configurations. For example, in most
cases, research center awards and other large grants go to a research team with a
configuration of funded grants approximating a de facto center. It is helpful to
disaggregate the constituent components of a center grant into discrete grants that the
research affinity group may consider pursuing to build a track record of success before
setting its sights on a major research award. These discrete grants may be developed by
disciplinary subgroups within the affinity group, while remaining in harmony with the
overall vision of the group. Faculty often overlook the option of configuring a research
center as a collection of smaller grants funded in a piecewise fashion.
Moreover, these groups can often benefit from experience-based observations on
the various processes, protocols, and sustaining practices related to communications,
group dynamics, decision making, and leadership needed to advance an affinity group to
successful competition for funding. It might be well to observe a caveat in directing the
group’s dynamics: exercise caution in recommending the use of “group process
techniques” that many group members might find personally intrusive, or worse, a
waste of time. Rather than focusing on topical pedagogies of group dynamics outside
the scope and charge of a research affinity group, consider focusing the group’s
attention on the research. Success in funding a research team comes from the hard
work of developing good ideas and crafting them into a compelling and competitive
proposal.
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 Finally, in this process of supporting research affinity groups, a senor faculty mentor
or an experienced research development professional can act as a referee or umpire at
research affinity group development meetings. The referee need not pass judgment on
the ideas but rather can offer advice when asked about whether development plans
seem to be aligned with a potentially competitive idea based on a multitude of factors
that come from repeated engagement and experience in research team development .

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Larger proposals that include multiple research partners pose a particular challenge to
the coherence of a project narrative. Individual team members typically contribute
individual narrative statements featuring their prior and future research but with little
or no recognition of how that research will integrate with other team members’
contributions to the proposed project. These “stand-alone” statements fail to describe
how each research strand complements every other strand, adding up to an integrated
set of contributions to the project’s vision, goals, and objectives. These individual
narrative contributions often do not address the overarching questions that motivate
the research, nor do they describe each of the multiple research strands in a context
that clearly demonstrates their relationship to the motivating questions or hypotheses.
Too often, these typically one- to four-page descriptive only contributions to a
proposal narrative resemble a series of isolated numbers comprising the combination
to a safe, but lacking the sequence required to open it. In the case of a project
narrative, the combination needed for funding must be a logically ordered sequence of
questions, or hypotheses, or perhaps statements of need, depending on the agency and
type of research, that explain the novel and significant features of the research activities
described in the narrative.
Descriptions of research activities or capacities improperly sequenced and explained
within the overarching context of a research vision, goals, and objectives turn the
narrative into something of a mystery for readers and reviewers. You don’t want
reviewers asking themselves and other review panel members after reading the
research narrative “why are all of these descriptions about various research capacities
important and what exactly does this research team intend to do?” However, this will
be the result if the research narrative evolves, to use the current vernacular, as a
collection of “stove-piped” or “siloed” contributions by multiple authors.
For example, a proposal addressing an issue related to sustainability may be
comprised of research team members from geosciences; physical, biological, and
agricultural sciences; engineering; computational sciences; and the social and behavioral
sciences. Perhaps the research focus is on the sustainability of a coastal ecosystem
impacted by climate change. In this case, it is easy to envision multiple research
contributions by those with research expertise in climate, water, modeling, sensors,
coastal biology, social and economic impacts of sustainability on affected stakeholders,
and research expertise on one or more species in the coastal estuaries that serve as
indicators of ecosystem health. Moreover, it is easy to see how researchers in one of
the foregoing research areas important to the sustainability of coastal ecosystems may
be tempted to write their narrative contributions as “siloed text.”
This will most likely occur when the vision is still evolving as the research
contributors draft their narrative contributions, or when the overarching questions
motivating the research have yet to be fully defined, or are in the process of being re-
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defined. The vagueness or incompleteness of the research vision can increase the
likelihood that a first full draft of the proposal will read as a series of siloed statements
unintegrated with one another.
Moreover, it is often the case that the research team members attempt to do too
many important tasks simultaneously but in isolation from each other. In these cases,
finding time to draft text is often difficult enough let alone adding the requirement of
reading and considering others’ contributions. This difficulty can be compounded by
electronic communications among team members that fluctuate between periods of
silence and cascades of electronic messages, often including drafts of graphics, figures,
and multiple track-edited versions of an evolving project description that can quickly
become a blizzard, or rainbow, of track edit colors.
These issues all cry out for an orderly resolution grounded on a well-crafted proposal
development schedule. This planning tool will help meld the vision and goals of the
project and communicate them continuously via a defined production timeline to all of
the contributing authors. This will better ensure that the text evolves in a way that not
only describes the importance of each research-specific strand or research contribution
but also describes how it interrelates with every other research strand included in the
project description. It is not an easy task, but this integration holds the key to success.
The team is well advised to find someone among its own members or from a campus
research office who can assist the PI in bringing informed coordination to the proposal
development process.
Another pitfall of a multiply authored research narrative or project description lies in
writing these statements as if the authors were contributing to an edited collection or
a journal issue rather than to the single, integrated statement identified as the
research vision. This occurs most often on multi or transdisciplinary proposals that
evolve ad hoc rather than from a well-planned proposal production schedule, or when
the decision to submit these complex proposals occurs only a month or several weeks
before the due date. In this last case, the proposal schedule can lead to a “fire drill” in
which potential new research partners are added concurrently with the writing of the
first drafts of the research narrative.
These situations can produce several drafts of the project description at a rapid rate
as multiple contributions are added to the narrative. The complete draft of the project
description may give the illusion of completeness, but on closer examination it may
lack an overarching organizing theme or research vision that synthesizes the
component contributions resulting in a coherent and logically sequenced whole.
Correcting this document after it has evolved can be difficult; unfortunately, such a draft
is likely to amount to nothing more than a siloed collection of research descriptions
loosely associated and lacking a narrative thread that can persuade reviewers of its
coherence. Once a complete narrative structure has emerged, contributors resist
making major renovations to it. However, if the collaborators understand that the first
full draft of a research project narrative is best viewed as a preliminary set of loosely
associated descriptions, then the principal investigator can call for major revisions
designed to produce a more integrated statement.
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 Indicators of a failed, or a weak narrative may reveal themselves sufficiently before
the due date to allow the time and effort required to transform a weak narrative into a
competitive narrative. Perhaps the best indicator of a weak complete first draft of the
research project description begins with a nagging sense of unease after reading it. It
doesn’t seem to convey a clear sense of what specifically is being proposed, what
questions are being asked, or hypotheses posed, nor does it explain why the research is
unique, innovative, or advances the field in some way. It may also fail to convey a sense
of how the multiple research descriptions meld to an integrated whole. Another
indicator of a failed or weak narrative is a difficulty in clearly explaining the significance
of the project and its outcomes after closely reading the 15 or 20 pages describing it.
It is a mistake to assume that your sense of uncertainty and vagueness following the
reading of the proposal indicates a lack of technical expertise to critique the narrative,
i.e., that the fault lies with the reader and not the writer. Two good reasons to dismiss
that thought implicate both you and the proposal author(s): (1) federal research
agencies, particularly the major ones that most often comprise the overall research
portfolios of universities, advise writing the research narrative for the intelligent reader,
not the expert reader. NSF, for example, advises writing to the reader of Scientific
American, or the scientifically literate reader. (2) Moreover, research agencies that fund
large, often transdisciplinary proposals, will have blended review panels comprised of
members from various disciplinary backgrounds, including the social and behavioral
sciences and, in some cases, the humanities. Research collaborators must describe their
research in a way that convinces the entire review panel, not just those from specific
disciplinary domains, to recommend the project for funding. So if you are asked to
critique a proposal, do not hesitate to note when you do not understand clearly what is
being proposed, or when the project’s goals and objectives appear ambiguous. Recall
Professor Albert Einstein’s observation that put a heavy burden on scientific authors: “If
you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. Most of the
fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a
language comprehensible to everyone.” The bottom line: When proposals lack clarity,
the fault lies with the author and not a review panel. In practice, it is better to be
presented with a challenging critique and penetrating questions in response to a draft
project description than to hear those challenging critiques and penetrating questions
from a review panel and program officer. In this case, your second chance is likely to
occur one year in the future when a resubmittal is possible.
Of course the best solution to the above issues is to formulate a plan for the
proposal’s production that anticipates such core issues as partnership configurations,
vision, and goals in a logical sequence that allows time for a draft narrative of the
project description to evolve continuously. A poorly planned proposal has little
likelihood of success. Walt Kelly’s Pogo once famously observed, “We have met the
enemy and he is us!” That observation perfectly fits a poorly planned and poorly
coordinated proposal development effort. But preparation and continuous
coordination and communications can save you from becoming your proposal’s enemy
by avoiding the issues discussed above. A well-planned and well-coordinated proposal
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development effort cannot turn ideas of modest importance into ideas of compelling
significance, but it can give your ideas a chance to be realized. A well-crafted proposal
will anticipate continuous revision to ensure that the project as a whole includes and
exceeds the sum of its individual contributors.

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Just as the Feynman diagrams brought clarity to understanding the interactions of
subatomic particles, on a less grand scale, diagrams, graphics, figures, tables, pictorial
representations, and other visuals play a key, albeit too often overlooked, role as an
integrator of the research narrative. This holds true particularly in the case of complex
project descriptions whose narratives describe interaction among multiple research
strands. Good writing forms the underpinning of any successful proposal, which explains
why grant writing workshops, faculty grant mentors, and proposal development
professionals all emphasize the importance of writing well.
The same advice is not always given, unfortunately, for the use of visuals as a
complement to and integrator of the narrative text. The graphical representation of a
research vision, or diagrams that show how the component goals and objectives of a
large research project relate and interact together to form a coherent, synergized
whole, can make the proposal narrative less challenging both to write and to read. In
fact, graphical representations of the main ideas of a proposal discussed and developed
concurrently with the drafting of narrative text, can help the members of the research
team write their contributions to the overall narrative with more clarity and focus than
might otherwise be possible. The end goal, of course, is to achieve a project description
that integrates narrative graphics and narrative text so closely as to make both easily
accessible to review panels and program officers, especially in those cases where
complex interactions among various research strands must be accessible and
memorable. Good ideas deserve and benefit enormously from the illuminating
interplay between well-crafted narrative text and accompanying graphics.
Graphics can play a critical role in proposals of any size, but become increasingly
important in large research proposals describing how the integration of multiple
research themes achieves a synergy impossible without the value-added benefits that
occur at the intersections and interfaces among research subtopics. The melding of
graphical skills and writing skills can energize a research narrative. Moreover, the
graphics provide a visual reference point for reviewers as they read the typically 15 to
40 pages of text required by the specific solicitation. Graphics can quickly illuminate the
key points of intersection among the research topic descriptions and clarify the
interrelatedness of topics in ways that can be quickly understood. Even in well-written
proposals, it can be a challenge for readers and reviewers to capture and hold an
understanding of 3, 4, or even 5 research strands that will be integrated into a coherent
research vision.
Narrative text is linear. It is grounded on a logical sequence of explanations made
coherent and persuasive by the author’s writing skills. Graphics, however, function as a
“visual language” able to capture complex relationships in a simple and unifying way;
hence the importance of the Feynman diagrams to physics for nearly 65 years, or, more
recently, the use of computer-generated visualizations as a way of understanding huge
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datasets, ranging from the atmospheric sciences to petroleum engineering, among
myriad other examples. With this in mind, high-quality graphics can make a significant
contribution to the overall success of a proposal by offering a robust counterpart to the
narrative text that serves to communicate the core research idea to reviewers and
program officers in an alternative and memorable form.
It is particularly important when working on large proposals to identify early any
graphics expertise that may reside within the research team, or any research office that
may help with the proposal. Do not wait until a full draft of the proposal narrative
starts to cry out for graphical support. Graphics, like the narrative text, need to be
developed in tandem with the evolution of the vision, goals, and objectives of the
research plan, and the text and graphics need to be logically intertwined to gain the
potential synergy inherent within them. Moreover, just as you wouldn’t write a
proposal using spare parts from other proposals, don’t borrow graphics from other
proposals, or, worse yet, look around in a clip-art library for your visual materials.
Always keep in mind that graphics should deepen the understanding of the research
ideas being proposed in the narrative text and illuminate the interrelatedness among
them in a simple and clear way. Graphics should function as a proposal integrator.
Given the significant benefits of well-planned and well-crafted graphics to the success of
the proposal, it is important that members of the research team give the integration of
graphical information into the narrative text the consideration it is due as a potentially
valuable contribution to a proposal’s success.

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Unsolicited proposals are often a significant source of funding for many academic
researchers, but new researchers may not even be aware that they can submit them.
Most researchers are aware that funding agencies regularly issue solicitations for
proposals, many recurring annually for many years. Because these announced
solicitations tend to be highly visible, e.g., they are posted on Grants.gov, announced on
agency websites, distributed through agency email and RSS alerts, and distributed by
many university research offices, researchers who are new to the grants process may
think that the only way to compete for funding is to respond to these published
solicitations. However, for many funding agencies, responding to solicitations is not the
only (and often not the best) way to win grant funding. Many agencies, including NSF,
NIH, DoD, DOE, DoED and DARPA, fund research through “unsolicited” or “investigator-
initiated” proposals.
While not all agencies accept unsolicited proposals, many do, and those that do
have a variety of mechanisms for providing guidance to researchers on the types of
unsolicited proposal they want to see. Moreover, as in the case of solicited proposals,
agencies will have specific guidelines describing the goals, objectives, review criteria,
and research or mission outcomes that will be used to evaluate unsolicited proposals.
Depending on funding agency and program areas within a specific agency, the
unsolicited proposal process may involve several steps that act as preliminary filters to
an invitation to submit an unsolicited proposal. In most instances, regardless of agency,
talking to a program officer about your interest in submitting an unsolicited proposal is
very helpful. This is especially important at the federal mission agencies where
developing a research relationship with the program officer will be an important factor
in your long-term funding success. Preliminary discussions with a program officer will
help ensure that your research objectives fit the agency mission priorities. Moreover,
after discussions with a program officer, you may discover preliminary gates to be
navigated prior to submitting a full unsolicited proposal to the agency.
One of the more common preliminary gates to submitting an unsolicited proposal is
the preparation of a brief, perhaps three to five-page white paper that demonstrates
the significance of your research to advancing the agency research mission objectives in
specific areas defined in the agency guidelines for unsolicited proposals, or often
defined in Broad Agency Announcements that are open for a year or more. The fact
that many BAAs that include instructions for unsolicited proposal are open for such long
periods of time, up to several years in some cases, offers another important opportunity
to develop a relationship with the appropriate program officers. These open BAAs may
be modified during the open period in ways that change the research priorities listed in
the BAA when it was first published, or add new research priorities that better fit an
evolving agency mission. Program officers offer the best sources of information about

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how these changes to a BAA affect the focus of what the agency wants to fund through
the unsolicited proposals process.
The purpose of the white paper, according to DoD, is to preclude unwarranted
effort on the part of an applicant whose proposed work is not of interest to the
agency. Based on assessment of the whitepapers, feedback will be provided to the
proposers to encourage or discourage them to submit a full proposal. White papers
should present the effort in sufficient detail to allow evaluation of the concept's
technical merit and its potential contributions of the effort to the agency-specific
mission.
Mission agencies may ask occasionally for the submission of a quad chart as part of
the unsolicited proposal process. This is a very abbreviated process wherein a one-page
document divided into quadrants serves as a template for responding to four key
questions related to your research and its relevance to the agency mission.
This abbreviated application process comprised of discrete and briefer preliminary
review gates (quad chart/white paper) limits your initial commitment of time and effort.
However, your success depends on your capacity to distill your research vision, goals,
and objectives into a very succinct and clearly written response that allows agency
program officers to quickly grasp the significance of your research and how it
advances the research mission of the agency. A white paper must quickly connect the
significance of your research and the research mission of the agency.
Here, too, the more knowledgeable you are about a funding agency’s research
mission, strategic plans, research culture, investment priorities, and the rationale
behind them, the better able you will be to develop highly competitive responses in the
form of quad charts, white papers, preliminary proposals, preapplications, and full
proposals as required by the agency-specific process.
The brevity required by the white paper format demands clarity and precision,
together with an easily understood and compelling statement of significance. Crafting a
white paper of five double-spaced pages, for example, requires a laser-like focus and
distillation of your research idea into its core essentials, followed by a convincing
mapping of that research core to the agency’s research mission and program-specific
priorities.
Once you identify federal agencies that fund research in areas of interest to you, it is
appropriate to explore the process of submitting unsolicited proposals. The agency
website is the starting point for this process. The generic strategies of writing
competitive white papers (or abstracts) and proposals will be similar across most
agencies and disciplines; however, each agency will have specific guidelines for
submitting unsolicited proposals with which you must become familiar in detail.
Become as knowledgeable as possible about the agency-specific guidelines for
unsolicited proposals and the research areas for which they are appropriate before
contacting a program officer to gain a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the
process for submitting an unsolicited proposal to a specific agency.
Some agencies, such as the Department of Energy, have standardized the process
for submitting unsolicited proposals across the entire agency as outlined in the DOE
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Guide For The Submission Of Unsolicited Proposals. DOE funds research across a very
broad spectrum of academic disciplines and a review of the unsolicited proposal guide
will give you not only an insight into what is required at DOE but a good understanding
of the unsolicited proposal process itself at all mission agencies. The National Science
Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, two major funders of basic research
awarded to universities, make, respectively, 50% and 80% of their awards through the
unsolicited or investigator-initiated process.
The National Science Foundation addresses the unsolicited proposal process in
Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide. The National Institutes of Health
developed Parent Announcements for use by applicants who wish to submit what were
formerly termed investigator-initiated or unsolicited applications. Other agencies, for
example, the defense agencies, have information on the submission of unsolicited
proposals distributed by agency (Navy, Army, Air Force, DAPRA) websites and also
detailed in long-range funding announcements, or BAAs.
The Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences announces its
interest in considering unsolicited applications for research, evaluation, statistics, and
knowledge utilization projects that would make significant contributions to the mission
of the Institute. The Department of the Interior’s US Geological Survey considers
unsolicited research proposals in support of any field of study that helps fulfill its
mission objectives. More information can be found in their Guide for Submission of
Unsolicited Proposals.
The preferred method for submitting ideas and concepts to DARPA is to respond to a
Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) in lieu of submitting unsolicited proposals.
Interested parties are encouraged to make preliminary contact with appropriate field
personnel before preparing a detailed unsolicited proposal or submitting proprietary
data. Such contact may provide insight into the general need for the type of effort
contemplated. Unsolicited proposals to DARPA must adhere to the policies and
procedures concerning the submission, receipt, evaluation, and acceptance or rejection
of unsolicited proposals set forth in FAR 15.6.
Finally, a Google search is a good way to find information about the unsolicited
proposals at federal agencies or programmatic areas within agencies of interest to you.
For example, a search on “submitting unsolicited proposals to ‘AGENCY’“ will often turn
up the information you are seeking.

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 ’

If you talk to any well-funded researcher, he’ll tell you that he has a drawer full of
proposals that were declined for funding. In fact, even extremely successful researchers
typically have had more proposals declined than funded. As a faculty member just
starting your career, you should expect to have your first several proposals declined.
When a funding agency decides not to fund your proposal, there are three ways to
respond:
1. Become discouraged and stop applying for funding;
2. Disregard the reviews and resubmit essentially the same proposal, hoping
you’ll get more intelligent reviewers next time; or
3. View it as a learning process: carefully analyze the reviewers’ comments, and
revise your proposal for resubmission, or, if appropriate, scrap that idea and
start over with a new idea.
Successful researchers take the third approach. They expect to have to revise and
resubmit proposals just as they often have to revise submitted publications. They
understand that reviewers’ comments are meant to provide guidance, and they study
them carefully. In cases where it is clear from the reviews that their idea is not a good
fit for that program or agency, they either look for a new funding source that’s a better
fit, or they try a different idea.
When your proposal is declined (remember, this isn’t a question of “if,” but a
question of “when”), take a quick look at your reviews. (If you applied to a foundation or
agency that doesn’t supply reviews, you’ll need to talk to the Program Officer, if
possible, to determine what contributed to the decision.) It’s very likely that at first
reading you’ll feel the reviews were unreasonable and that the reviewers obviously
didn’t understand your proposal and were probably incompetent.
Put the reviews away for a few days and then, after you’ve had some time to calm
down, pick them up again and read them carefully. Reviews can be analyzed in several
ways, which we’ll discuss. (Since funders use a variety of review processes, it’s likely
that not all of the statements below will apply to your specific situation, so be sure you
understand the review process for the particular agency and program to which you
applied.)
 The reviewers felt the project wasn’t a good fit for the program.
The Program Officer is usually the person who instructs reviewers regarding the
priorities and scope of the specific funding program, so this issue can easily be explored
by talking to the Program Officer. You can respond to this critique by either submitting
your proposal to a different program that’s a better fit, or by modifying your project so
that it better fits the program based on the Program Officer’s advice.

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 The reviewers felt the scope of the project was inappropriate (either too ambitious
for the funding and time available, or not ambitious enough).
Talk to colleagues in your field to assess whether the reviewers might be correct. If you
still feel that your project’s scope is appropriate, revise your proposal to directly address
this issue. Include a detailed project timeline showing how long it will take to
accomplish each task. If reviewers felt the project was too ambitious, discuss your
previous experience that demonstrates that you can accomplish what you’re promising
in the time allotted.
 The reviewers had specific technical concerns.
This is usually the easiest issue to address. Determine whether the reviewers’ concerns
are valid. If they are, revise your project plan accordingly. If you don’t agree that the
reviewers’ concerns are valid, talk to colleagues to get their assessment. If you’re still
confident that you are correct, revise your proposal to specifically and respectfully
explain, using data if possible, why those technical concerns aren’t a problem.
 The reviewers felt your research wasn’t exciting or significant enough.
This is a more difficult problem to address. First, honestly assess your project. Are they
correct? If so, remember that the degree of innovation and impact expected varies by
agency, so a project that may not be innovative enough for NSF might be considered by
the Air Force Office of Sponsored Research, if it meets one of their specific needs. (This
is often the case for research that is more applied than basic.) In that case, you might
want to explore revising and submitting your proposal to a different agency. If you do
feel the project is significant, then you may simply need to do a better job of explaining
that in your proposal. In that case, revise the text of your proposal to make a more
compelling argument.
 Most of the reviewers liked your proposal, but one reviewer panned it.
This is a classic case where talking to the Program Officer can be extremely helpful.
Usually the Program Officer was in the room during the review process and can give you
some insight into the discussion. It’s often the case with review panels that most of the
reviewers are not experts in your particular subfield. If the reviewer who didn’t like your
proposal happened to be the reviewer who was most knowledgeable in your field, then
that person’s comments likely carried a lot of weight with the other reviewers, and
you’ll need to take those comments very seriously. However, if the one negative
reviewer simply had a dyspeptic disposition or was acting on a pet peeve, and if
reviewers change with each cycle, the Program Officer may encourage you to resubmit
with minimal changes. If it was clear from the reviews that the sole negative reviewer
was not knowledgeable in your field, or his comments seemed to come out of “left
field,” don’t use a lot of space responding to those comments in your proposal revision
unless you’re reasonably confident that that particular reviewer will be on the next
panel.

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 The reviewers didn’t seem to understand your proposal and brought up concerns
that weren’t applicable or that were addressed in the proposal.
In this case, it’s tempting to dismiss the reviewers as incompetent. However, it’s more
likely that your proposal wasn’t clear. Remember that reviewers aren’t necessarily
experts in your subfield; they may have to review a large number of proposals in a short
period of time, and they may be reading your proposal at two a.m. Your project
description needs to be clear, well-organized, and easy to follow. You need to make it
very easy for reviewers to find the main points and to locate where you address each
review criterion. Revise your proposal text and ask colleagues from outside your field to
read it. If they can understand it, then it’s likely that a tired reviewer reading your
proposal at two a.m. will be able to understand it.
 The reviewers weren’t convinced that the project was likely to succeed (either
because of a lack of preliminary data or because they felt the PI or team weren’t
sufficiently qualified).
Reviewers want to fund projects that are likely to succeed. If your project appears to be
risky, then you’ll need to give the reviewers some evidence that these risks are
manageable. If the reviewers identified one particular aspect of the project that they
felt was too risky, you may need to generate some preliminary data to convince the
reviewers that that issue is actually not risky, or you’ll need to develop a plan to work
around problems in that area to convince the reviewers that the project can still be
successful even if that particular program component doesn’t work out. If reviewers
weren’t convinced that you or your team had the required expertise, you might address
that concern by generating preliminary data (and, ideally, publications in the topic).
Another approach is to bring in a collaborator with the requisite background. If your
idea is a high-risk, high-payoff idea, and you don’t have the resources to generate the
needed preliminary data, check to see whether there might be other programs set aside
to fund such ideas (e.g., NSF’s EAGER grants). In some cases, you may need to carve out
a smaller project (for example, cutting back to a one-year project to allow you to
develop proof-of-concept data rather than asking reviewers to risk three years of
funding); or, you may need to find another funder that is more comfortable with higher-
risk research (e.g., DARPA). This is another case where the Program Officer can give you
invaluable advice.
 The reviewers were generally complimentary, but didn’t give the proposal a high
enough score to be funded.
This can be one of the most frustrating kinds of reviews – the reviewers were all
generally complimentary; they might have brought up a few minor points but didn’t
mention any major shortcomings of the proposal, but they just didn’t give the proposal
high enough ratings to be funded. In fact, if it was an NSF panel, they might have
recommended the proposal for funding, but didn’t “highly recommend” it. In all
likelihood, your project idea had merit, but it didn’t excite the reviewers as much as
some other proposals did. This is another case where it’s important to talk to the
Program Officer. Often, the Program Officer can give you an idea of how close you were
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to being funded, and she can tell you whether any other factors played a part (for
example, yours may have been one of several good proposals in a narrow subtopic, and
they only wanted to fund one). If the reviewers just weren’t as excited about your
proposal as they were about others, you may need to rework your proposal to explain
more compellingly what the ultimate outcome of the research will be, why it’s
significant, and what the impact will be. Be sure that you clearly communicate the big
picture – how will this research advance your field? How does this particular project
contribute to your long-term research goals? Ask your colleagues to read the reworked
text and tell you whether they find the arguments persuasive.
Based on the information you’ve gathered by reading the reviews carefully,
talking to your colleagues, and talking to the Program Officer, you can then decide
whether to: (1) revise the proposal and resubmit to the same program; (2) revise the
proposal and submit to a different program within the same agency; (3) revise the
proposal and submit to a different agency; or (4) start over with a new or significantly
modified project idea. Just remember that even when your proposal isn’t funded, you
have learned something from the process, and your next proposal is likely to be more
competitive.

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As with many things related to research, competing for grants can be both an
enormously rewarding and an enormously frustrating endeavor. It’s important to
remember that writing research proposals is a learned skill. You have recently earned a
doctorate and landed a faculty position—good evidence that you have the expertise,
determination, and (most likely) the small streak of masochism needed to compete
successfully for research funding. However, as we’ve discussed in the preceding pages,
winning a grant is not simply the inevitable outcome of articulating a great idea to
funders who are waiting to hand out money. Identifying the right funding opportunity
and writing a competitive proposal requires a thoughtful, disciplined approach and the
development of new skills that you likely weren’t taught in graduate school. What’s
more, with funding rates typically less than 20%, you are virtually assured of having
many more proposals declined than funded.
Why go through all that trouble, then? Most obviously, when you do win funding, it
can be extremely useful in helping you accomplish your research. However, even when
you don’t win that grant, the process of developing the proposal can provide a number
of benefits. It can help you more clearly define your research ideas and plans. It can
provide opportunities and a focus for developing collaborations. It can help you to
connect with the broader research community in your discipline, particularly if you get
to know the Program Officer and perhaps have the opportunity to become a reviewer.
And it can help you vet your ideas with experts in your field (the Program Officer and
reviewers).
The single biggest predictor of success in winning research funding is not giving up
after you’ve had those first few proposals declined. Learn from your reviews, talk to the
funders, continue to develop your research ideas, generate preliminary data and
publications if you can, and work with your mentors to further develop your proposal
writing skills. These activities will help you not only win funding, but also to build a
successful academic career.

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